Meeting Minutes 9.10.08

CUFSP Meeting Minutes 09.09.08

Current Projects
1. Community Garden in Pupin Plaza (Matthew Shapero matthew.shapero@gmail.com):
· Weeding
· Watering
· Vegetable picking
· Replanting for fall growing season
· Grant applications to sustain garden
· Get permission to use a greenhouse in Schermerhorn in the winter (Abi Cohen abigailrcohen@gmail.com)
· Planning what to plant in spring
· Selling vegetables at Core Foods organic Co-op (in JJ’s Place)

2. Public House Community Garden (Becky Davies rmd2154@columbia.edu):
· Sponsored by Center for Urban Research and Policy and Prof Venkatesh
· Grant Houses are located on 123-125th Street at Amsterdam
· Fundraising and Grant applications
· Planning design of the plots and what vegetables to grow (Fall)
· Planting starts, seeds with community residents (Spring)
· Fieldtrips with children from Daycare
o Apple Picking Trip in October
o Urban Farm Visit in the fall

3. CSA - Community Supported Agriculture (Megan McNally megan.mcnally@gmail.com):
· Volunteers need for CSA pickup on Thursdays though the fall
· Spring ’09 CSA coordinator needed

4. Food Purchasing for Dining Halls (Liz Alloco era2116@columbia.edu):
· Helping to change what food is purchased for the dining halls, emphasis on local, organic and fair trade
· Real Food Challenge (Allison Powell alisonrpowell@gmail.com): nationwide campaign for college campus dining halls to purchase local food: Nationwide goal: 20% of all food purchased is local
· Advertising/raising awareness about local food at John Jay
· Creating a local foods marketing campaign à Discover where the food comes from
· Reusable food containers for takeout
· Current status of John Jay: No trays or plastic bags available

5. Food Composting
· 2 garbage bins at the garden used for compost
· More help needed à possible getting the dining halls to compost

6. Chicken Coop (Maddie Sparer ms3332@columbia.edu)
· Space for coop would be behind the Office of Environmental Stewardship (115th between Bdway and Riverside)
· Obtaining permission to access the space (extra challenge will be access outside of business hours as building is shared by Budget Office as well)
· Building the chicken coop
· Implementation in Spring ‘09

7. Speaker Series on Sustainable Food
· Attracting famous speakers to speak at CU
· Events with other student groups on campus

CUFSP First Official Meeting Date

We will have our first official meeting this week and are excited for everyone who stopped by our booth at the Activities Fair or expressed interest in the Columbia Community Garden to come learn more about what we do and how they can get involved!

Meeting details:

Tuesday, September 9th
9pm
Lerner Piano Lounge (2nd floor)

In weeks following, meetings will occur on Wednesdays at 9pm in another location, TBD.

The first half of the meeting will be an overview of our projects and how you can be involved. The second half we will divide into project groups, discuss the direction of each and assign tasks. If you came to the preliminary meeting last Wednesday and know how you’d like to be involved, feel free to attend only the second half (starting at 9:30pm). As many of you learned at the Activities Fair or earlier, there are a wide range of ways to participate in the club’s efforts, from pulling a few weeds on occasion, to taking on a leadership position in an existing project or creating your own.

Please be prompt so we can be efficient and finish at 10pm.

If you are interested in receiving an overview of all the environmental groups at Columbia, attend Green Umbrella’s Wednesday night event at 9pm in Earl Hall. CUFSP—an interdisciplinary club—will also be featured there, but we will not be assigning roles or duties at that time so you need not attend to participate.

We look forward to meeting everyone and strengthening our work force to change our food system!