Building Gardens: Food Justice, Community Engagement, and Gardens for the Asian Pacific Islander Community in the San Gabriel Valley

Abstract

Culturally relevant gardens can significantly benefit regions like the San Gabriel Valley, which contain nearly a third of Asian Americans who are low income, by providing organically grown produce for students (Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 2018). This article focuses on one service-learning program: Asian/Asian American Studies 3510 Food Justice, the Body, and the Environment in the API Community at Cal State LA that works with schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley to build culturally relevant produce gardens. While our work focuses on building gardens and considerations of food justice, one of the greatest barriers to community-university partnerships is the lack of procedural transparency embedded within the university structure and culture. The heart of this essay is this process.