CCGA extends heartfelt thanks to our wonderful presenters, breakout session hosts, and special guests!
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Paula Acevedo has been a leader of El Paseo Community Garden since 2015 and is dedicated to coordinating projects and programming alongside her husband Antonio and their son. She continues to volunteer today, overseeing the site and growing food for Pilsen neighbors. The garden was founded in 2009 on a former brownfield site and has become a recreational place for beekeeping, picnics, cookouts, a monarch way station, a play area, yoga and dance performance space and a dog run. Paula hopes to keep El Paseo sustainable and long-term, lasting years past her shared tenure. In thinking about the future, Paula hopes to create a coalition of neighbors to help bring more green space to the neighborhood.
• Sharing Notes: Community Gardeners Panel Discussion (2-3pm)
Christine Ahmed holds a PhD in Health and has been a community garden coordinator at Vermillion Community Garden in Vermillion, South Dakota for five years. During that time, she started a program called Grow A Row for the local food pantry. She will share research that she did with another community garden coordinator on starting that program.
• Growing Extra for Food Pantries in a Time of Food Insecurity: Trials, Tribulations, and Successes (2-3pm)
Emilia Arellano es Coordinadora de invernadero para el Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance. Ofrece talleres de horticultura para adultos y dirige un grupo diverso y dedicado de más de 30 voluntarios que propagan plantas de adorno y comestibles. Además maneja el Jardín donativo desde la etapa de cultivación hasta la distribución de las cosechas. Tiene licenciatura en Estudios latinoamericanos y literatura hispana de la Universidad de Chicago y certificados en Agricultura urbana sostenible, Diseño de jardinería comestible e Iniciativa empresarial para comida local de Windy City Harvest. Su pasión por la jardinería sostenible no se limita al trabajo. Como voluntaria en el programa Chicago Master Gardeners, tiene mucha experiencia trabajando junto a jóvenes y adultos en jardines de escuelas, hospitales y huertos comunitarios del norte y oeste de Chicago.
Emilia Arellano is the Greenhouse Coordinator for the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance. She offers horticulture workshops for adults and leads a diverse and dedicated group of more than 30 volunteers who propagate ornamental plants and edibles. She also manages the Donation Garden from the cultivation stage to the distribution of the crops. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Hispanic Literature from the University of Chicago and certificates in Sustainable Urban Agriculture, Edible Garden Design, and Windy City Harvest Local Food Entrepreneurship. Her passion for sustainable gardening is not limited to work. As a volunteer in the Chicago Master Gardeners program, she has extensive experience working alongside youth and adults in school gardens, hospitals, and community gardens in North and West Chicago.
• Best Practices for Sustainable Gardening in Small Spaces (10-11am) and Técnicas eficaces para la jardinera ecológica en pequeños espacios (11:30-12:30)
Amina Bahloul is a Program Coordinator with Big Green, where she works to connect students to real food through a network of Learning Gardens. Prior to Big Green, Amina worked as the Head Kitchen Teacher at Edible Schoolyard NYC’s Harlem Campus, and served as a FoodCorps member in the Bronx. Earlier in her career, she worked as a Nutrition and Garden Educator through the Michigan Fitness Foundation, and also served as Healthy Lifestyles Project Coordinator with the Capital Area Health Alliance. Amina hails from Michigan, where she grew up cheering on the Spartans, Go Green! Amina brings to her work a degree in Nutrition, a love of trying new things, and a passion for connecting kids to real food.
• Connect to School Gardens: Growing More Food and Celebrating Culture in Community (10-11am)
Anai Brizuela is an information enthusiast and enjoys her connection to Earth more every day. After earning her Permaculture Design Certificate in November, 2018, she went on to cofound the Chicago Urban Permaculture Salon with Lori Upchurch. She is working towards cultivating a more resilient network of activists to grow a greener world.
Anaí es une entusiasta de la información y cada día disfruta más de su conexión con la Tierra. Después de completar un curso de Diseño de Permacultura en noviembre de 2018, buscaron una comunidad en la que practicar esta forma holística, lo que resultó en la co-creación del Salón de Permacultura Urbana de Chicago. Elle está trabajando para cultivar más resiliencia en su propia vida y comunidad.
• Permaculture in Practice (11:30-12:30) and Introducción a la Permacultura en Práctica (2-3pm)
Robin Cline currently serves as Assistant Director of NeighborSpace, an urban land trust in Chicago. Robin’s leadership is multifaceted, involving neighborhood agency, creative stewardship, and program design. She supports community leaders throughout Chicago in developing, managing, and sustaining community land sites, with a special focus on community nature play and public program projects. She is also the part-time executive director for the art group OperaMatic, a site-specific artist group that activates public spaces in Humboldt Park and Hermosa with playful, collaborative, and civic performances. In both her current roles, Robin advances community cohesion through creative effort and social play.
• 2021 Water Access for Urban Growers (11:30-12:30)
Andrew “Drew” deWaard is the Director of Professional Services for a Chicago-based IT Consulting Firm. He has been an amateur gardener since setting foot in his grandfather’s garden over three decades ago. He would rather be in gardens than in meetings.
• What CCGA Means to Us (11:10-11:25am)
Kasey Eaves is a member of Montrose Metra Garden and Owner, Vivant Gardening Services. Kasey started growing edibles and her treasured sunflowers at age two on family farm property in Southern Illinois. Now, as owner of Vivant Gardening Services, she spends her days making the act of gardening with edibles, natives and pollinator plants approachable to area residents, restaurants, schools, and more. Never daunted by the task of growing in a city’s unusual spaces, Kasey loves finding creative and easily maintained growing solutions for city dwellers.
• Sharing Notes: Community Gardeners Panel Discussion (2-3pm)
Betsy Elsaesser is the President of the North Park Village Garden Club, one of the oldest and largest community gardens in Chicago. She works to plant and maintain trees in her neighborhood of Logan Square. Betsy has loved gardens, trees and natural areas all her life. She has been a volunteer TreeKeeper with Openlands since 1993 and assists with TreeKeeper classes and pruning practical exams. After retiring as a Professor at Oakton Community College in 2012, she passed the International Society of Arboriculture exam to become a Certified Arborist, and also completed the Tree Risk Assessment Qualification.
• Treehuggers Unite! Plant and protect our trees! (11:30-12:30)
Gabriel Garcia has loved interacting with community involving anything and everything permaculture since completing his first Permaculture Design Course in 2016 and Advanced PDC in 2017. Gabriel also passionately works on land defense projects and regenerative land projects.
Gabriel tomo su primero curso de permacultura diseño en 2016 & un curso de permacultura diseño avanzada en 2017. Gabriel entonces empezo compartiendo experiencias con la comunidad alrededor la permacultura. Gabriel tambien trabaja en proyectos en la defensa de tierras & proyectos de tierra regeneración.
• Introducción a la Permacultura en Práctica (2-3pm)
Kimberly George is a garden leader at the Historic Slumbusters Garden, Crystal’s Peace Garden, Urban Prairie Waldorf School Youth Garden, and various other North Lawndale Greening Committee (NLGC) gardens. She developed youth garden programs for the YMCA of Chicago and for Chicago Youth Centers. She is a member of CCGA, NLGC, and North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council GROWSS Committee.
• What CCGA Means to Us (11:10-11:25am)
Dan Gibbs is the Backyard Farmer and has grown produce using organic methods for 15 years. As a farmer he spent many years delivering his home grown produce to families, restaurants and grocery stores in southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicagoland area.As a gardener he specializes in transforming backyard spaces into beautiful and productive mini-farms.The mission at The Backyard Farmer is simple: to make local food gardening accessible and easy for families through education, inspiration and ongoing support.
• Ask a Gardener with Dan Gibbs, the Back Yard Farmer (1:15-2:00pm)
Zachary Grant is the Local Foods and Small Farms Educator for the University of Illinois Extension. From 2008-2015, Zack was the manager and director of the Sustainable Student Farm at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a working small farm laboratory located on the fruit research farm at UIUC. Its mission is to grow year-round, high-quality produce for the dining halls and university community. In addition, the SSF conducts research in intensive small-scale farming techniques, season extension techniques, and outreach to the larger growing community. In 2015, he became the Local Food Systems and Small Farms Educator for Cook County, focusing on urban food production systems programming for a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Production Planning for Community Garden Systems (10-11am)
Tim Hamilton is partially retired and spends his time on his passions: Fruit Trees and bees! Living in northern Lake County, Tim maintains an orchard containing over 60 trees on ¾ of an acre. Tim’s orchard includes 17 varieties of apples, 15 pears, 4 peaches, 4 plums, 4 cherries and quince. He is a past president of “MidFEx” Midwest Fruit Tree Explorers, a backyard orchard club with over 70 members in the greater Chicago region. Tim has been growing and grafting fruit trees for the past 40 years. He is always searching for unique varieties of fruit to add to his orchard with a focus on taste and an extended harvest.
• Selecting Fruit Tree Varieties for an Extended Harvest. (Pick Three!) (10-11am)
Breanne Heath is the Senior Program Specialist in Gardening at the Chicago Park District. Breanne is a certified horticulturalist. She also designed and built a rooftop farm in the city well over five years ago, where she grows all kinds of fruits and vegetables and tries not to let anything go to waste by preserving everything. Before joining the Park District as a full-time employee, Breanne taught many adult and youth classes in organic agriculture, cider-brewing, composting, canning, grafting fruit trees, fermenting, and urban foraging.
• Sharing Notes: Community Gardeners Panel Discussion (2-3pm)
Peter Hoy is the Executive Director of Stein Learning Gardens at St. Sabina in the Auburn Gresham community. His current projects include #ChicagoGrowsFood, a collaborative of school garden educators, growers, earth stewards, and academics that formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. #ChicagoGrowsFood provides technical assistance and growing materials for families to produce food at home as a solution.
• #ChicagoGrowsFood: How to Creatively Grow Food in Small Spaces (11:30-12:30)
Gina Jamison is the Health & Wellness Coordinator for the Garfield Park Advisory Council (GarfieldPAC), a member of the Best Babies Zone Advisory Council (BBZ), the Garfield Park Garden Network, and the Garfield Park Neighborhood Market. She is also a volunteer at the Garfield Park Community Council (GPCC). Gina manages the award winning Kuumba Tre-Ahm Community Garden (KTA Garden), which hosts the Willa Cather Elementary School under the direction of The Gardeneers and won the CEGA 2018 Garden in Excellence Award. She is a founding member of Chicago Community Gardeners Association (CCGA) and the proprietor of Ms. Gina’s Medley, LLC where she creates delicious products grown from the KTA Community Garden and other local community gardens. She returned to Garfield Park in 2016 when she retired from 20 years of service as a tractor-trailer driver with FedEx. Now, she pours her energy into her true passions: engaging with community organizations and gardening!
Katherine Jernigan is a garden educator and environmental justice advocate with a passion for growing food in urban spaces. She is a Program Coordinator with the nonprofit Big Green and works to support teachers, staff, and community members in school Learning Gardens in Chicago. She is also a member of #ChicagoGrowsFood, a collaborative project devoted to expanding and unifying the food-growing community in Chicagoland.
• Connect to School Gardens: Growing More Food and Celebrating Culture in Community (10-11am)
Sam Koentopp is a lifelong Chicagoan and works as the Program Manager for Big Green where he has worked for the past 7 years supporting a network of 200 school gardens in CPS schoolyards. He is passionate about food, how it is grown, prepared, shared, and eaten. He brings that passion to his work in education to help others learn about our foodways with a goal to activate them in the movement for a more just and nourishing food system. He is a husband, father of 2 girls, drummer, and backyard gardener.
• Connect to School Gardens: Growing More Food and Celebrating Culture in Community (11:30-12:30)
Matthias Lampe loves gardening and beekeeping and feels at peace when he’s at the garden or working with the bees! In his own words, “When I moved to Chicago from Europe I was lucky to have the El Paseo Community Garden in my neighborhood. Noah Frazier and I started the beekeeping at the garden 3 years ago with just 2 hives and could extend to 4 hives last year. The bee hives are a great addition to the garden providing us with honey and pollination and we were lucky to get a group of volunteers from the Pilsen community to help us take care of the bees last season. This year we are starting a beekeeping program at El Paseo Community Garden open for everyone who wants to learn and practice beekeeping and become part of the garden. You can apply at https://elpaseogarden.org/beekeeping/ if you live somewhere in the area. I am very happy to be able to share what we learned in the last 3 years and hope to inspire you to keep bees at your community or private garden. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like to visit us and our bees at the garden.”
• Keeping Bees at Your Community Garden (10-11am, 11:30-12:30 and 2-3pm)
Andrea Lee is the Manager of External Affairs at UCAN, a 150-year-old social service agency headquartered in North Lawndale, that believes that youth who have experienced trauma can be our future leaders. She has spent 20 years addressing social disparities through work in shelters, low-income housing, and policy, dedicating the last six to the notion that relationships born from volunteer service can transform society.
• What CCGA Means to Us (11:10-11:25am)
Peggy Malecki is the publisher of Natural Awakenings Chicago magazine, an independent monthly publication focused on living a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle, now in its eleventh year. She is co-host of The Mike Nowak Show, and has been reporting on gardening, green living and the environment with Mike since the spring of 2016. They also worked together to create the Chicago Excellence in Gardening Awards (CEGA), which were presented for the first time in 2017. Living green is important to Peggy, who strives to incorporate sustainable habits into her everyday life and teach others to do the same. Although she grew up on the northwest side of Chicago, Peggy says she spent countless childhood hours with her grandparents in then-small-town Antioch, IL, learning how to compost, grow veggies without chemicals and appreciate the outdoors.
• 2021 Chicago Excellence in Gardening Awards (1:15-1:45pm)
Dr. Andrew Margenot addresses the literal foundation of all cropping systems: soils. As an Assistant Professor of Soil Science with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Crop Sciences Department, he is advancing how we monitor and manage soils as natural capital. His research team evaluates how human activities can enhance or compromise soil services to human societies, with an emphasis on food security from urban and rural agroecosystems in the U.S. Midwest and East Africa.
• Mapping Soil Lead in Chicago, Potential Uptake by Vegetables (10-11am)
Akilah Martin is a Certified Professional Coach and a consultant at AM Root Builders, Inc. She holds a doctorate in philosophy and is a board member at Friends of the Forest Preserves. Her core values are joy and freedom; she is “rooted” in co-creating high energy relationships, specifically, creating and actively sustaining an abundantly healthy relationship for yourself and then others.
• #ChicagoGrowsFood: How to Creatively Grow Food in Small Spaces (11:30-12:30)
Juline McClinton is Secretary and Garden Leader of the Austin Green Team. She is an active volunteer working to help organize, maintain, and support community gardens and community beautification in the Austin neighborhood.
• Connect to School Gardens: Growing More Food and Celebrating Culture in Community (11:30-12:30)
Veronica Perez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and raised in Logan Square, Chicago. She has been teaching dance fitness for 5 years. She is currently the MixxedFit Master Educator for the State of Illinois. She believes that dance fitness helps people accept, love and empower each other. For her, community involvement is always a priority! She has organized donation drives for local organizations with the help of other MixxedFit instructors and enthusiasts throughout the city benefiting families in need. In her own words, “I want you to want to forget you are working out, to love the music, smile and to get hooked while achieving long-term benefits and experience an absolute blast in one exciting hour of calorie-burning, body-energizing, awe-inspiring movements meant to engage and captivate for life!”
• Get Moving with MixxedFit! (pre-recorded session)
Sean Ruane is the Executive Director of Advocates for Urban Agriculture and is committed to building a more just and equitable food system in Chicago. He was born and currently lives on the southwest side of Chicago and developed a love for growing food at an early age, while spending time at his grandparent’s farm in Ireland. Sean holds a B.A in Education, an M.A in Justice Education, and a certificate in Sustainable Urban Agriculture through the Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship program. Prior to AUA, Sean worked as an educator and non-profit leader for over a decade, spending six years as a classroom teacher and social justice educator, two years as a Program Coordinator with Big Green, and the last few years as Co-Founder and Director of Just Roots Chicago.
• 2021 Water Access for Urban Growers (11:30-12:30)
Mike Strode is the Exchange Coordinator of the Kola Nut Collaborative. He is a writer, IT consultant, and collaborative social economist residing in southeast Chicago. His community engagement work has included ride leadership with the Chicago chapter of Red, Bike & Green; editorial and archival oversight for Fultonia; and co-facilitation of Art Is Bonfire. His grounding philosophy is mycelium, collaborative agility, empathic individualization, and all things human glue. He is founder and Exchange Coordinator of the Kola Nut Collaborative, a time-based skills and service trading platform which seeks to advance conversation on time banking, community currency design, and social economy in Chicago.
• The Offers & Needs Market (11:30-12:30)
Angela Taylor is the Wellness Coordinator for the Garfield Park Community Council (GPCC). Angela is one of the founders of the Garfield Park Garden Network and Garfield Park Neighborhood Market and also manages many other wellness events and activities. In addition to her work with GPCC, Angela is a board member of Chicago Community Gardeners Association, Advocates for Urban Agriculture, and Working Bikes. She also serves on the Community Advisory Council for The Hatchery, and the Leadership and Community Advisory Councils for West Side United. Angela is a lifelong resident of the community. With her family, she manages the award-winning Fulton Street Vegetable and Flower Garden.
• Welcome to the CCGA 8th Annual Conference! (9:30)
May Toy is the President of the Skinner Park Advisory Council and a CCGA Resources Committee member. Her love of gardening started as a toddler, learning from her mother who’s a natural gardener. May has been a community gardener for over 25 years. As president of the Skinner Park Advisory Council, she led efforts to help build and restore three community gardens: two in Skinner Park and another on a closed section of Loomis Street. The Advisory Council recruits volunteers to help maintain the gardens which cover nearly 3/4 of an acre and provide beautiful tranquil spaces for people to enjoy nature and to grow both community and food organically. May is also active in her community and is an advocate of public parks, open spaces, and community safety. She volunteers her time to serve as Neighbors of West Loop’s Vice President and Chair of the Parks and Open Space Committee to work on park issues and concerns in the West Loop as well as on the 12th District’s Police Advisory Council.
• Sharing Notes: Community Gardeners Panel Discussion (2-3pm)
Lori Upchurch is a permaculture designer and facilitator living in the 29th ward of Chicago. Lori has been engaged in regenerative community design since 2000, with Northside Unschoolers, Great Lakes Urban Explorers, Girls Scouts of Chicago, Edge Youth Theater and now, Chicago Urban Permaculture Salon and Permaculture Chicago Teaching Institute. She is in the process of turning her rectangle of Midwest soil into a food and medicine forest and the wetlands prairie it wants to be.
• Permaculture in Practice (11:30-12:30)
George Watson is a graduate student at the University of Illinois studying heavy metal contamination in Chicago soil systems. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Delaware in the spring of 2019. As part of his research with the U of I, he took over 2,000 soil samples from across the city of Chicago. He says he had a lot of fun taking these samples and was able to learn a lot about the great city of Chicago.
• Mapping Soil Lead in Chicago, Potential Uptake by Vegetables (10-11am)
Trinisa Williams is the Chef-Owner of Trini’s Tasty Pastries (and Catering), and is a Resident of Garfield Park. She is a Community Resident of The Hatchery of Chicago, where she prepares the products for her business. Her biggest client, pre-COVID-19, is the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance – she provided wrap sandwiches, colorful salads, and assorted pastries, that were sold in the Gift Shop. Along with her uber-sharp knives, Trinisa is equipped with an A.A.S. in Culinary Arts from The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (1996), and has a B.S. in Food Science from Kansas State University (2017). In addition to owning her own pastry and catering businesses, Trinisa works during the day for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety Inspection Services, as a Consumer Safety Officer. She conducts Food Safety Assessments in Federally-inspected meat and poultry slaughter and processing establishments. She verifies companies’ Food Safety programs, ensuring that consumers have the safest meat and poultry possible. Although dessert is her weakness, Trinisa focuses on eating healthy, by using fresh ingredients, and healthier cooking techniques. She writes her own recipes, and uses healthy cooking techniques for her dishes – and she still eats dessert!
• Cooking Demo with Chef Trinisa Williams (1:15-2:00pm)