Mr. Kenji Nakagawa mentioned in our story is now a regular instructor at work parties, teaching new-comers skills and knowledge that he acquired at Beacon Food Forest.
Beacon Food Forest
Community empowerment
An orange bandanna marks the leadership of its wearer at a work party.
Beacon Food Forest
A successful solution requires a strong community where all are given enough knowledge (aka. power) and trust to fully engage themselves. Beacon Food Forest is co-founded by two local residents but the active engagement from the wider community is the true reason why it is still growing and prospering after 6 years. Hence, building a strong community that is empowered with knowledge, skills, and trust is the key for the Beacon Food Forest to sustain.
Community empowerment allows each individual in the community to acquire knowledge and skills needed to participate in the decision-making process of Beacon Food Forest. By providing educational opportunities and by offering leadership opportunities whenever possible (e.g. during workshops, work parties, maintenance events, discussions, and meetings), we allow participants to gain confidence and trust, and then develop a passion and a sense of responsibility towards the land and people which Beacon Food Forest stewards. It is so essential that we do this because for any solution to be carried on, the solution has to be something in which everyone can and is willing to engage themselves in.
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Frequent events or interactions within the community that create opportunities for education, leadership and decision-making.
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Strong leaders to facilitate events/discussions with equity.
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Existing leaders’ willingness to detach from the leadership position.
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The food forest is a multi-disciplined and continuous learning process and so it is unlikely that anyone - even a skillful leader - is absolutely correct. Hence, it would be appropriate to always listen for different opinions from the community to promote empowerment.
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Trust is the key to successful empowerment. Do make sure that new leaders are given full support from existing leaders as well as other community members. For existing leaders, letting go of control is always difficult but is crucial for successful empowerment.
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In our effort to empower the community, we noticed that our leaders are mostly white people. Although we have tried hard to be inclusive to different ethnicities by holding events in other communities, planting cultural-specific species, having our bulletin board translated into more than 5 languages, it is obvious that exclusion still occurred. It would be important to gain more than a couple of leaders of different ethnicities so that the Beacon Food Forest may care for people from different backgrounds.