Growing Connections
Growing Connections is focused on small urban gardening that grows produce difficult to find in local markets—reconnecting our clients to their own cultures.
Contact Information
TBD
Program Manager
MC Moazed
MC has been drawn to the world of plants since she was a little kid growing food and flowers with her grandma. While earning a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UC Santa Cruz, MC fed an interest in plant ecology by working as a student farm assistant, as a crew leader for the Campus Natural Reserve, and as a field technician for a plant pathology lab. Since then, she has explored the diverse flora of California through her work as a field technician and has fueled a passion for teaching as a teaching assistant on multiple undergraduate field courses.
MC believes in including everyone in a more resilient and just food system, and in the power of plants and gardening to help people heal, grow, and reconnect with their cultures, one another, and the earth.
“Gardening is simply a framework for engagement with our world, grounded in care, action and intimacy with place. To garden is to care deeply, inclusively and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads.” – Georgina Reid
What We Do
Growing Connections is an exciting new community food project through which UPAC is developing a “network of program gardens.” Growing Connections is focused on small urban gardening where space is limited, including use of indoor and hydroponic gardening. Because UPAC clients come from many different cultural backgrounds, our gardens will grow produce that is difficult to find in local markets, which in turn, will reconnect our clients to their own cultures.
Our immediate goal for Growing Connections is to increase food sovereignty among youth ages 18-29 participating in our Expanding Horizons program and East Wind Clubhouse members by teaching and allowing them to plant and tend a garden, enjoy the food grown they grow, donate items from the garden to other underserved individuals and earn income through selling seedlings and fresh produce. Our long-term goal is to increase the number of UPAC programs with sustainable gardens.
Open Job Opportunities
Funded by The San Diego Foundation
