Facing Climate Change As Urban Gardeners

Face climate despair head-on in these monthly, peer-to-peer meet ups. Meet other community gardeners and land stewards to learn and exchange tips for gardening with climate change and workshop community preparedness in your neighborhood.

This month, we will be joined by Sasha Verma who will lead a workshop on mutual aid.

Mutual aid is a term that is increasingly seen in our day to day lives in NYC. While it has a long history in humankind, many of us may have only heard this term for the first time very recently. In this workshop we will explore facets of the history of mutual aid to ground us in our current movements-- how mutual aid is an indigenous concept that continues to shape the world we live in. Together we will get a chance to understand the roles we play in our communities, how to tap into mutual aid work to build capacity for our future survival and [re]center the land as the basis of mutuality and thus power. All of us have the wisdom, resources and knowledge to build the future we want to see, mutual aid shows us that we just need to tap in.

About the facilitator: Sasha Verma (any pronouns) is an Earth worker, death worker, educator and organizer based in so-called Brooklyn, NY. When the pandemic began in 2020, they began the process of composting their life to leave the corporate world to return back to living with more reciprocity and mutuality. Sasha works now to compost systems, beliefs and ideas that no longer serve our communities to rebirth futures that center reciprocity, care, the Earth and our ancestors.

NYC Parks GreenThumb hosts this event. We are proud to be the nation’s most extensive urban community gardening program, sustaining over 550 gardens throughout New York City. With GreenThumb’s support, community gardens are centers of environmental justice, ensuring that our city is fairer, safer, and greener for all. GreenThumb’s events are free and open to the public.