Thanks to all the neighbors and volunteers who contributed to Roots & Roofs! Thanks also to Godman Guild Association, Local Matters, Habitat for Humanity, OSU Extension, Weinland Park Collaborative, The Columbus Foundation, Wagenbrenner Development, 4th Street Farms, and Continuum Church! Special shout out to the great volunteers from Centennial High School who worked at 4th Street Farms installing buried irrigation lines.
For many years there have been spring and fall “clean up” or “service” days in Weinland Park.
Join your many neighbors and other community volunteers for the second annual “Roots and Roofs” event on Saturday, May 19th from 9:30a.m. to 2:30p.m featuring both Gardens and Housing.
The event combines service projects to plant flowers, prepare community gardens and pick up litter with open houses for three new and renovated single-family homes that are near completion.
The central gathering place for “Roots & Roofs” will be Godman Guild Association, 303 E. Sixth Ave. Residents and visitors can participate in service projects and obtain information about the open houses and housing opportunities. Lunch will be served at noon.
The NRP Group has constructed 40 lease-to-purchase, single-family homes with affordable rents. Wagenbrenner Development has overseen the total renovation of 10 formerly vacant houses that are being sold for affordable homeownership and an additional four currently being rehabbed. Construction of six new houses will begin later this spring on a vacant lot at North Fourth and East Eighth Avenue. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Columbus has completed three homes with an additional four on the way.
Free “Roots and Roofs” T-shirts will be provided to volunteers (while supplies last) and a wonderful free meal by Local Matters during a short program at Godman Guild at Noon to hear about the exciting housing options occurring throughout the neighborhood. All activities will originate from Godman Guild (303 E. 6th Avenue) but may also include activities at 4th Street Farms, The Bird Sanctuary on North 5th Street, WP Elementary School and the park behind the school. Homes will be available to tour in several locations throughout the neighborhood. The Tool Library will provide tools and supplies to all volunteers.
To register to volunteer please call OSU Extension at 299-2915.
4th Street Farms is joining with Green Columbus, and lead sponsor The Nature Conservancy for Earth Day 2012: Root Down, which includes hundreds of volunteer activities across the region during the weekend of April 14-15 and a citywide celebration on April 21 at the Columbus Commons. Sign up to volunteer with us now!
For Columbus’ bicentennial year, Green Columbus is planning its best Earth Day event yet, with more volunteer opportunities and the first ever downtown Columbus celebration. Since 2007, the people of Central Ohio have come out in force, putting in nearly 30,000 person-hours at Earth Day worksites cleaning the banks of our scenic rivers, planting over 15,000 trees, removing countless bags of trash from parks and neighborhoods, and much more. To see what volunteers were able to accomplish last year check out the Earth Day 2011: Lighten Up video or read about our Earth Day History.
At 4th Street Farms, we are building compost bins, moving compost and manure into new bins, building blueberry beds, planting fruit trees, weeding the 4th Street Tree Lawn, planting flowers, picking up litter along 4th Street, and more! Bring gloves, tools (if you have them), and a smile!
Trish from Local Matters delivers fruit trees from Oakland Nursery donated by Green Funds of The Columbus Foundation for Earth Day! Thanks so much to everyone involved!
MORPC invites partners to attend a conversation about the future of the 3M site in Weinland Park. See more at Seed,
Join us in planning for the 2012 season at 4th Street Farms!
We had an amazing 2011. Let’s keep building on that momentum!
We’re having a potluck on Sunday, Feb 26th at 6PM @ 1363 N. 4th Street (parking available on street). We will be making veggie spaghetti. Please bring a dish and ideas to share. All are welcome!
In addition to sharing a meal together, let’s chat about:
We hope to see you there!
Join in sharing your ideas for the Weinland Park Community Civic Association Business & Land Use Development Committee on Feb 25 from 1-5 PM at Godman Guild Association! All are welcome!
Are you interested in adding some art to your gardens? Join talented local artists, Melissa Vogley Woods and Elena Harvey Collins Jan.21st/12-2pm @ Godman Guild Association. Start your projects, meet other growers/artists and share a delicious lunch!
United Way of Central Ohio celebrates an important milestone with the 20th Anniversary Community Care Day, the largest single volunteering effort in central Ohio.
Over the past 20 years, Community Care Day has mobilized more than 75,000 volunteers
and provided an estimated half a million dollars in equivalent labor costs to United Way member agencies, other nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups and local schools.
Community Care Day is a powerful example of how people come together through United Way to help strengthen our community. The thousands of hours of volunteer service given each year allows participating schools and nonprofit organizations to further their missions of moving central Ohio forward in the interconnected areas of education, income, health and home.
This year, 3,000 volunteers from 150 companies are participating in almost 200 projects throughout central Ohio. Projects range from stocking food pantries and organizing clothing donations, to building a storage cabin, planting 100 trees, landscaping, mulching, and maintaining trails at Camp Mary Orton, which is part of the Godman Guild Association, a longtime United Way of Central Ohio member agency located in Weinland Park. Maintaining and improving Camp Mary Orton will help the organization in its mission to provide children and adults with opportunities to develop leadership skills and learn about the natural environment.
In Weinland Park, we specifically want to thank Affinion Group who alongside volunteers from the Godman Guild and the Weinland Park Community Civic Association, donated more than 400 hours of volunteer labor in a single day at 4th Street Farms, Godman Guild, Weinland Park Elementary and Schoenbaum Family Center!
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Starting with weeding and tying up the tomato plants, the afternoon goal was to finish one more cinder block raised bed garden at 4th Street Farms.
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While one team worked to level ground, haul cinder blocks, and fill the bed full of rich soil, another team was hard at work landscaping the tree lawn along 4th Street.
First clearing the area of trash and debris, the tree lawn team then tilled and broke up the soil with shovels, clearing the land of all the weeds in the tree lawn and planting low maintenance aromatic perennial herbs like lavender and sage interspersed with colorful flowers like daffodils and tulips.
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Community Care Day is sponsored by Bob Evans Farms and the Kroger Company. Their generosity supports the efforts of the thousands of volunteers who are working to advance the common good in central Ohio.
We also want to specifically thank The Columbus Foundation for their support of Directions for Youth and Families who supported the volunteer work in Weinland Park. Thank you again Affinion Group! It was a joy to work with you and hope you continue to feel inspired by your service on Community Care Day.
Invite everyone to come by 4th Street Farms at 1379 N. 4th Street and check it out!
Here’s a sneak peak at new city-approved litter education stickers that were created by a group of Weinland Park residents working in collaboration with researchers from The Ohio State University College of Public Health on a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) project entitled On Our Soil. These stickers (after minor editing) will go on trash bins throughout Weinland Park sometime soon.
Special thanks for this sticker go to Laura Bidwa, Antonio Barno, Susan Colbert, Jim Bach, The Neighborhood Design Center and all the wonderful people who provided feedback at our annual Weinland Park Community Festival in the park.
This litter educational sticker is part of a project called On Our Soil, a title suggested by Chris Orban, Chair of the Mobility Committee of the Weinland Park Community Civic Association. On Our Soil is focused on creating shared vocabulary between experts and laypeople regarding litter and brownfields. We have two major brownfields in Weinland Park: one is the former Columbus Coated Fabrics site on Grant Avenue and the other is the Auld/3M site on 4th Street.
So, given the ongoing development at these sites, the community choose to focus Public Health research on litter and brownfields. Both the topic and the outcome were chosen and developed by the community in collaboration with the researchers from the College of Public Health who practice Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR).
CBPR is a type of research that establishes an equal partnership between community and research experts and On Our Soil is a great example of living that aim. From the title and research to the outcomes and deliverables, like this sticker, community members have been involved as equal partners along the way. It is, after all, literally our soil.
This unique partnership also includes a recent trip to the National Outreach Scholarship Conference where not only was On Our Soil featured both as a workshop and a presentation facilitated by community resident Evelyn Van Til and researcher from the College of Nursing Rosemary Chaudry, but also honored long time tireless advocate and community partner Susan Colbert, who won a national award for her work at Weinland Park’s OSU Extension.
Together, in collaboration, we will all make a difference On Our Soil.
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On Saturday, October 22nd, as part of a nationwide “Make a Difference Day,” over 180 amazing Hands On Central Ohio volunteers came out on a crisp fall day to “Make a Difference” in Weinland Park.
 Gathering at the Weinland Park Elementary to sign in and prepare for the day, volunteers from the “Y,” City Year, Godman Guild, Weinland Park Community Civic Association, and other organizations were all excited to participate. People came from all over the city to see all the wonderful work going on in Weinland Park.
 Kicking off “Make a Difference Day,” teams of volunteers eagerly went to work on several safety and beautification projects designed to build community and make an impact:
 School and Park - Weeding, mulching, and bulb plantingGodman Guild – Preparing beds for the winter, painting the perimeter fence, weeding, etc.
4th Street Farms (just south of East 8th) – Preparing beds for winter, constructing raised beds, installation of decorative fencing, mulching, etc. Litter Clean Up – picking up trash on all public streets throughout the neighborhood Inventory of Alley Conditions - recording things such as broken dumpsters, overflowing dumpsters, bulk items, etc.  Check out some of the visible results:
All of this helps all of us feel more safe, enjoy our space, and beautify our community.
 Genuine thanks to all the efforts of HandsOn Central Ohio and the great volunteers from the “Y,” City Year, Godman Guild, Weinland Park Community Civic Association, and other organizations who put in over 600 hours in one morning of weeding, planting flowers, litter clean-up, and more!
 Join in! ”Make a Difference” everyday: Keep Weinland Park Beautiful! |
Knowlton School of Architecture (KSA) researchers, led by professor Kay Bea Jones, are working with a team of designers, planners and developers assembled by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) to improve the remediated former 3M/Auld site on 5th Ave and North 4th Street in Columbus.
Students in ARCH 844 have interpreted the outcomes of the community meeting held 19 July 2011 at the Godman Guild adjacent to the site to help neighbors, planners, and grant stakeholders to visualize possibilities for improving quality of life and food access in the community.
The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development is supporting this research focused on an agrarian urbanist overlay and food security for the area. The exhibit is online and in the library at Godman Guild through January. Take a moment to check it out and provide feedback.
