Who We Are
We are a mutual aid organization that seeks to build community, create resiliency, empower each other, and provide environmental stewardship through converting lawns into perennial garden ecosystems. Our goal is to create food security for ourselves and our neighbors that doesn’t rely on the global food chain.
We are made up of individuals in the Cincinnati area who value community care and the environment.
Our membership is made of a diverse group of individuals whose backgrounds range from years of experience with permaculture design and sustainable agriculture to those who have no gardening experience at all. Some members have skills in other areas, such as art, construction, community organizing, or writing. We welcome people of all skill levels to join and value all contributions.
We are a non-hierarchical organization whose focus is on solidarity rather than charity.
What We Do
Simply put, we primarily work to transform lawns into gardens. However, that work is comprised of many different aspects, including community outreach, political and environmental education, landscape design, networking, collecting resources, and the actual physical labor of gardening.
We structure our work through committees. Below are some functions of each committee, although some work may fall under multiple committees.
Landscape Design Committee:
- Design site plans in coordination with those responsible for the site
- Plan work days to implement site plants
- Coordinate volunteers during implementation
- Work with Foraging Committee to ensure materials needed for sites are available
- Plan design jams
- Review site conversion requests and prioritize projects
Foraging Committee:
- Ask for and pick up donations
- Sustainably scavenge plants and other materials
- Divert materials from the waste stream into projects for our sites
- Catalog plants and materials that are available and how to access them
- Building relationships to secure donations
- Fundraising (if needed)
Education and Outreach Committee:
- Manage social media
- Organize new member orientations
- Create art and education materials
- Connect with the community to find members, volunteers, potential sites, and donors
- Host educational events, such as the book club
Core Committee:
- Organize and plan General Meetings
- Manage the FNL email
- Coordinate between committees
- Update membership lists
- Hold necessary votes
- Any other administrative work
What is Mutual Aid
Mutual aid is an approach that uses collaboration as a tool to meet people’s basic needs, especially when the larger systems in place fail. Mutual aid doesn’t have a hierarchy and instead focuses on organizing members through solidarity so that they can act collectively to address scarcities like food, housing, medicine, transportation, etc. This is what is meant by the phrase “solidarity not charity.” Mutual aid seeks to address the causes of scarcity rather than providing unsustainable solutions that ignore the larger systemic issues.
Food Not Lawns aims to build food security within local communities; we want to have gardens that can provide food and other resources to our community without relying on a global supply chain or government aid.
“More and more ordinary people are feeling called to respond in their communities, creating bold and innovative ways to share resources and support vulnerable neighbors. This survival work, when done in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change, is called mutual aid.” -Dean Spade, Mutual Aid