by Muskegon Critic
As hard up as my town is at nearly 17%+ unemployment and with vacant factories...and as much poverty as there is, I still don't think of it as the sort of town where Americorps comes in to help out. But apparently it is. It is, indeed, a place where Americorps comes to help make the city a better place to live. A friend and I went to visit the McLaughlin Urban Farm in Muskegon...which is not an Americorps endeavor, by the way...it's a Community enCompass endeavor. The farm is about a half acre in the middle of the McLaughlin neighborhood where several abandoned and condemned houses had been plowed under and as of 2009 replaced with an organic, urban farm with a large hoop house and several mounds of composting leaves and vegetable matter. It's a for-profit urban farm whose goal is to employ people in the impoverished McLaughlin neighborhood, provide local residents with fresh produce, and replace crumbling buildings with green space.
continued at Daily Kos....
