We Miss Our Intern - Alison Petro!

The Gardens Project is truly sad to have to say goodbye to Alison Petro - an amazing student intern from the Community Services Dept. at UC Santa Cruz. Alison has been a great asset to the organization over the past six months.
As Alison learned, The Gardens Project is engaged in numerous projects with the overall goal of creating access to local, fresh produce and facilitating the rebuilding of our local food system. An area of great need, particularly in the Willits area, has been to develop the capacity to implement a Farm-to-School program with the Willits Unified School District. Alison’s main accomplishment has been developing this capacity.
* She developed a Farm-to-School resource binder with case studies from other schools focusing on successes and challenges.
* She assisted with the leadership and community development of the new WISC Community Garden through facilitation and participation in weekly events.
* At the Willits Farmer’s Market, Alison assists with the promotion of the Brookside School Farm and sales of their produce to support the Willits Farm-to-School program, as well as sell Brookside produce, along with the sale of bulk grains from a local grain promotion program - Grange Grains, promote the Farm-to-School program and the Brookside School Farm.
* At the Brookside School Farm she assisted with weekly harvesting of vegetables for food preservation workshops and for farmers market.
* She proactively facilitated meetings with the Food Service Director, helped organize food service staff trainings in the use of fresh produce, and is actively promoting food preserving classes to preserve foods for the developing program at Willits Unified.
* One of the other pieces to developing capacity in the Farm-to-School movement is providing food service staff with training to handle seasonal, fresh produce. Alison successfully facilitated the development of trainings for food service staff in Fort Bragg, Willits, and Covelo. The trainings, paid for by NCO, brought in a local executive chef to train food service staff in fresh produce preparation.
Once again, we are grateful to have collaborated with UCSC to host Alison at The Gardens Project of NCO. We hope to have the opportunity to work with Alison in the future. We miss you!