Microgrant for Racialized Gardeners Program
- Pollinator Pathway Blog
- 6d
- 6 min read
By Sam Rohe
Hi reader, I’m Sam from the Frank St Bee & Butterfly Garden located on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, which encompasses the Ottawa River Valley and surrounding area. I am a white, non-binary settler and I have recently stepped down after serving on the Frank St Garden organizing team for five years. If you want to learn more about the garden, you can read our previous article in The Buzz!
At the Frank St Bee & Butterfly Garden, we shape our programs and outreach with the unique demographics of our neighbourhood in mind. When the garden was two years old and began attracting a lot of new volunteers, we were concerned that our volunteer population was over 90% white. Our mission statement was “to provide a beautiful space to build friendships and community while learning how to support local pollinators and ecosystems.” If our volunteer demographic was overwhelmingly made up of white people, then we were not fulfilling our mission of building community, and our work would have been contributing to structural inequalities. We have participation guidelines that new volunteers sign, including statements condemning bigotry and discrimination, but we recognized that this alone was not enough to ensure racialized individuals feel safe in a
predominantly white space. To better support the racialized gardeners in our community, we created the Microgrant for Racialized Gardeners program, which distributed small grants during peak gardening season.
If you are not familiar with the term “racialized”, it is a sociological concept related to racism. We like to share this definition:
“People seen as belonging to racialized minorities are people who could be perceived as being socially different from, for example, the racial or ethnic majority. In Canada, the term “racialized minority” usually refers to [non-white people]. The word “racialized” stresses the fact that race is neither biological nor objective but is a concept which is societal in origin.” (from Racialized Minority | The Canadian Encyclopedia)
We like this definition for our community initiative because it is a relative term that frames racialization as societally created from an ideology that erodes personal and cultural identity to create divisive racial hierarchies. In this article, we will also use the term “BIPOC,” which stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour. Because language evolves over time, terms like “racialized” and “BIPOC” may shift in meaning or fall out of use by the time you read this. We welcome your feedback on any ideas related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The ways people are racialized in the area surrounding our garden are unique to this community, and community gardens in other areas should reflect on their own local contexts when creating programming.
In the lands surrounding the Frank St Garden, the larger picture of land stewardship and cultural practices of connecting to the land have been disrupted or systematically made inaccessible to Indigenous and racialized individuals in Canada. This is the legacy of settler colonialism, namely the forced displacement of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people from their unceded lands, the prioritization of white settlers in land ownership, and the consequences of those and other racist practices in the present day. The impact of the resulting interlocking systems of oppression vary in each individual experience and contribute to an individual’s likelihood of participating in the garden.
We recognize that running a program solely within our garden does not effectively support racialized gardeners, because our demographics indicate existing barriers for BIPOC community members. Instead, we decided to offer a program external to the garden that would take a small step towards building the world that we want to live in; where the “Canadian” outdoors is not viewed as a predominantly white space, systematic barriers of all kinds are lowered and reparations address the enduring impacts of settler-colonialism and racism.
When we conceived of the microgrant program, we also happened to be the lucky recipients of a grant that gave us more money than we needed to run the garden. We decided to share these extra resources with local gardeners who are systematically denied access to land and resources because of historical and ongoing racism. We created the Microgrant for Racialized Gardeners, which ran for two years and distributed one or more grants of CAN$50-100 per month during peak gardening season (April to September).
Microgrant recipients were chosen by random
draw every month to ensure fairness. Microgrant recipients were chosen by random draw every month to ensure fairness. After two years of grant distribution, we were unable to secure enough funding for basic garden operations and unfortunately, had to end the grant program.
A group of white volunteers working on a program for the BIPOC community without collaboration are likely to miss crucial details at best, and at worst, increase marginalization and reinforce systemic racism. To help avoid the worst case, we consulted with BIPOC community members including members of other gardens, members of local anti-racism groups, and students in social justice domains. In return we showed appreciation to our newfound collective of community consultants for their expertise and lived experiences by offering payment to compensate their labour.
The community consultants identified a few places in the program where we had increased barriers to obtaining the grant instead of lowering them. For example, a member of our team suggested that we screen applicants by asking them to submit photos of themselves in the application form because without screening, the microgrant could be “scammed” by white applicants. However, further consultations with community members broke down the many reasons why it is both impossible and racist to attempt to guess someone’s race using a picture. These discussions revealed how adding a photo requirement could stop many deserving applicants from applying.
We further lowered barriers to obtaining the microgrant by:
Working in partnership with other community organizations that serve BIPOC populations to promote the microgrant.
Having minimal requirements for application. To apply, individuals only need to self-identify as racialized and as gardeners or land stewards. They are asked to provide just enough contact information to receive the grant and to share their postal code. Applicants could remain semi-anonymous.
Distributing grants to both individuals and to organizations that served initiatives for BIPOC gardeners.
Added broad definitions of “gardeners” and “land stewards” to avoid restricting application access to colonial gardening practices.
Not requiring applicants to participate in any other Frank Garden programming.
Not requiring the grant money to be spent in a certain way.
We had an optional field on the form where applicants could share information about their personal connection with gardening, or any other gardening groups they worked with. This way, we could promote the efforts of our applicants consensually and without pressure to share. While many applicants chose not to share, we were excited to learn about applicants who were part of gardening groups that were created to welcome newcomers. These groups facilitated familiar gardening practices, provided a small form of food security, and cultivated a safe place to share both familiar and new language.
Additionally, many of our applicants shared stories of gardening in challenging places, like high rise apartment balconies. These stories highlight the difficulty of finding access to land in urban settings and the importance of accessible community land-sharing and stewarding programs.
Confronting issues of demographic disparity in a community group is challenging, especially when the community group does not have many volunteers of diverse cultural backgrounds to drive the direction of internal improvements. It’s also unfair to expect volunteers of a marginalized demographic to represent that entire demographic and give organizational-level guidance, though when this does happen, these efforts should be respected and followed.
We did not think that a small microgrant program would solve systemic issues. We also did not expect that the microgrant program would “fix” our group’s demographic disparity. We, however, did think that this small program contributed to the mosaic of community efforts dedicated to addressing systematic inequalities. Resources should be shared until no one is underresourced. Community organizations best serve their communities, and by extension their other goals, by taking small but sustainable steps towards building a future that is grounded in fairness, justice and belonging.
Is your outdoorsy group working on this mosaic too? Do you have thoughts or feedback about the microgrant program? We would love to hear from you! Please email Sam or contact the Frank St Garden directly via Instagram (@frankstbbg) or email (fbgardener@proton.me).
Edited by Athourina David and Nkosinothando Mhlanga
