GreenDorchester (Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition)

Collaborate for food access; cooperate for community! The Dorchester Community Food Co-op is having a Pot Luck Dinner and general get together at 6 p.m. on Thursday, August 25 at the beautiful new Nightingale Community Garden—recently renovated by Boston Natural Area Network, near the corner of Park St. and Washington St. in Dorchester. The garden is alive with activity, and is a model for creating a space that brings together the full diversity of Dorchester residents. Please come and bring friends and neighbors who are interested in creating a new cooperative market in Dorchester!

For more information, read the Food Co-op’s August 2011 monthly update here.

Dorchester is home to nearly 20 community gardens, which are some of the oldest gardens in Boston. Join this bicycle tour to visit a mix of recently renovated gardens and some old favorites. Participants must provide their own bikes (helmets are required). A guardian must accompany children under 14. Meet at Fields Corner T Station, Charles Street Entrance at 10 a.m. Co-sponsored by DotBike and the Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition. For more information, call 617-542-7696, email info@bostonnatural.org, or click here to view the Seed, Sow and Grow brochure.

Ashmont is the first neighborhood of Dorchester to get a food truck through the city’s Boston Food Truck program! Staff Meal will bring tasty subs, sandwiches, summer rolls and more to Dorchester Ave. (in front of the Carruth Building) every Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The timing works out well with the Ashmont Farmer’s Market (which runs 3 to 7 p.m. on Fridays July through October) to give the area full-day food coverage during the market’s season.

See a sample menu here, or view a press release from the city. Want to operate your own food truck? Visit Mobile Food Vending. Finally, for a map of the public food truck locations go to: www.cityofboston.gov/business/mobile/publiclocationmap.asp.

The July 9 DEHC Saturday workshop was spent teaching tiny tots to plant. Field’s Corner Children Thrive, a division of Thrive in Five Boston, launched its formal presence in Dorchester with a “Family Fun Day” at the Dorchester House Multi-Service Center. The action-packed event included a slew of activities, including games, fun, theater from the Boston Children’s Museum, safe play areas, infant massage, and of course, DEHC’s planting workshop!

Before the little tykes arrived, DEHC did some garden bed improvement at the Dorchester House. A few curious onlookers wandered in and out of the planting area behind the Ellet St. parking lot as DEHC members, clad in “Talk Read Play” t-shirts, raked lumpy soil into clean plots and prepared to transplant peppers, marigolds, basil and squash from biodegradable pots into several garden beds. Around 9:30 a.m. small children (ages 0 – 5) began to wander by and the educational portion of the program began. Continue on for more details about the day, pictures of cute kids and details about Field’s Corner Children Thrive. Continue Reading »

Saturday, June 25th was a pleasant day in Boston and a perfect day for one of DEHC’s environmental workshops. On this special occasion, DEHC was lucky enough to spend several hours visiting, learning, volunteering, and trading ideas at The Food Project‘s urban farm and greenhouse in Dudley Square (just minutes away in our neighboring Roxbury). For those unfamiliar, The Food Project is a Boston-based non-profit that works to develop a sustainable food system, not only by  growing produce and distributing organic food to local restaurants, residents and farmers’ markets, but also by obtaining great community buy-in for all of their activities. With expansive youth programs, multi-lingual signage, an online and offline educational portfolio, the Boston Bounty Bucks program, and a sliding scale raised-bed “Build-a-Garden” project, the organize has done an amazing job of aiding and incorporating its own neighborhood(s). Read on to hear about DEHC’s visit. Continue Reading »

Every summer, Boston Natural Areas Network, in partnership with MA DCR, local businesses, non-profits and residents, organizes the Neponset River Greenway Festival, celebrating the Neponset River and its many offerings in Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park and Milton. BNAN populates the river’s “multi-use walking and biking trail and many riverfront parks with family oriented events.”  Enjoy films, strolls, swims, tunes, moonlight paddling, and many other fun events – all for free! Continue Reading »

A little late to get to today’s entertainment & open wading pool, but there’s many weeks of fun to come! The Neponset River Greenway “Especially for Children Performance Series” begins! Starting July 7, every Thursday morning in July, enjoy this series of kid-friendly performances from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. All kinds of entertainment will be featured at Ryan Playground in Mattapan. Amazing musicians, live animals, and even storytelling! That’s not all! After every event kids will be allowed to play in the park’s wading pool. Check www.bostonnatural.org or call 617-542-7696 for more information and performance schedule. For Neponset River Greenway Festival events, click here.

On Thursday July 7, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Cornell “Sugarfoot” Coley teaches hand- drum rhythms and bursts of high energy African, Latin/Caribbean and Brazilian dance.

On Thursday, July 14 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Bonaparte the Magician will dazzle and delight audiences of all ages with his unique blend of amazing magic, hysterical comedy and much more! Entertainment for later dates TBD.

Beantown’s gone Green! In a 2011 survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Boston was named the nation’s sixth-most “Green” city. Emphasizing the increased urbanization of the United States and Canada, the survey examined 27 cities “with a view to representing a number of the most populous metropolitan areas” in the two countries. Notably, Boston ranked no. 2 for the “Water” and “Energy” categories (others included “CO², Land Use, Buildings, Transport, Waste, Air and Environmental Governance”).

The “Expert Advisory Panel” of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s “US and Canada Green City Index” includes names from The Ford Foundation, The Natural Resources Defense Council, The Regional Plan Association, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU and Harvard. To learn more about Boston’s environmental programs and “score” on the report, read on. Or, you can view the full report here.

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After weeks of coordination (and many last minute changes) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) visited three sites in Dorchester and Roxbury on June 21, 2011, with a whole caravan of “alphabet soup” government agencies, including the Department of Commerce, Department of Education (DOE), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Labor (DOL) Health and Human Services (HHS) and more. These federal agencies joined the City of Boston and numerous community partners (Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, DEHC, Health Resources In Action, Greater Four Corners Action Coalition, Nuestra CDC, the Urban League of Eastern MA, Youth Build Boston, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, The Food Project and others) on a tour of innovative economic, educational and environmental developments in inner city Boston. For descriptions of 2/3 sites, read on. Continue Reading »