PUC is whole heartedly committed to bottom-up, grass-roots organizing as a means of creating any form of social change. One of the most fundamental principals of PUC is that we WILL NOT become active in any community unless the residents of that community not only accept our presence, but participate in the development of the overall vision for its transformation and take up leadership roles in the work that we engage in.
Therefore, PUC is always engage in a variety of community organizing efforts in any neighborhood that we enter before initiating a project, as well as throughout its opperation.
In North-Central Philly (the home of LDG), PUC devoted the first year of its presence in the community to organizing. We attended various community meetings, canvassed the neighborhood numerous times, threw block parties and festivals in order to build relationships with our closest neighbors, rose awareness about our young organization and emerging project, and discussed ways that we can collaborate to ensure that this remain a sustainable, community-based project before ever breaking ground on the farm. This process has ensured that LDG is a sustainable project, and this method of grass-roots organizing is central to any, and all of our initiatives.
To put it simply, there is nothing without community. It was once said that “nothing about us, without us, is for us”, and it is an essential for PUC that our “us” increasingly constitutes a local population in any neighborhood that we are working in. Any and all PUC projects are the product of a ever evolving relationships between our young organizers, the residents of the community that we are working in, and the institutions and organizations within that community; all working in solidarity to harvest a collective vision, and implement that vision to develop this community sustainably, equitably, and from the ground-up.