Grandpas Garden

Cup From Above is a community cafe that makes great coffee and exists to love and connect our community.  We help many people every day through several grass roots programs we've designed to alleviate poverty and build a healthy community.  We have many people in need in our community who are homeless, suffering from extreme poverty and have had prolonged unemployment.  They have nothing to do with their time and they have little money to purchase healthy food.  In a recent meeting with the government it was suggested we start a community garden that will enable them to work together to grow healthy, nutritious produce which will be cooked up in the "Grandma's Kitchen" project.  We currently give away food through our "tucker token" program which was the first step.  The old proverb says, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”  We believe in empowering people with skills that will restore them to live interdependently in our community.    

Ashley Tait is coordinating the construction of the area out the back.  We are paving the area between the Graffiti Wall and the new garden bed and also creating partial covering between the garden and the wall.  This way you will be able to sit out there and drink a delicious cup of coffee along the graffiti wall and have some shade from the scorching sun through the summer months.  

All up we need $2000.

Here is a break down of the costs...

• Arbors (for shade). Approximately 5x3 pallet wide and 2x 2 pallet wide $635 not including concrete or plants
• Rock walls for garden: $220.  
• Basket wall out of fencing is $120. 
• Road base and sand for paving $310.  
• Compost $440
• Cement and blend for posts and steps $120
• Labour $275

We have been functioning as a community cafe since June 2012.  We started offering suspended coffees in April 2013 which been the vehicle to connect us with people in need in our community.  ABC Radio National covered a story on us doing suspended coffees which you can check out here http://www.cupfromabove.com.au/newcup/tag/abc-radio-national/.  On the 1 year anniversary we began giving away "Tucker Tokens".  This enabled people in our community to purchase food one meal at a time for people who are struggling.  This was important to get food in to someone's belly in a crisis but it wasn't solving the problem.  So we set up "Grandma's Kitchen" to teach people how to cook cheap and healthy nutritious food.  This has proved to be an invaluable way to connect the community and actually solve the problem of a lack of food right at the source of the problem.

There are many potential obstacles for this project.  We will have a team of people working together to maintain the garden who will likely be suffering from mental illness and possibly anti-social behaviour.  Our chaplains will work alongside these people and as a community we will need to manage it together.  It is only through working on a simple task, such as gardening, that people with complex issues are able to overcome and grow stronger. 

We really appreciate your support! We can't do this without you.