Located 1570 Rohr Road in Lockbourne Ohio is the Hoover Y Park. The park is YMCA project fostering youth development through camps offered at their facilities. The park also has a one acre garden project, the Hoover Y Learning Garden. The learning garden was created to produce a variety of foods, save seeds, preserve, feed people and offer opportunities to learn about healthy food choices, healthy living and community engagement. It's really a two-pronged attack against food deserts.
First of all the garden provides education. Education about healthy choices and fresh produce is key to eliminating the deserts. As intuitive as it may seem, think for a moment about how you learned about healthy foods. Your parents probably told you that greens were good for you and would make you finish all the vegetables on your plate before you could have any dessert. But what if your parents were never educated to know that greens were good? What if they only had fast food in access and so you never had any vegetables on your plate? Education, realizing the value of nutritious food is key to changing the eating habits of inhabitants of food deserts. If produce suddenly became available in their area, but they had been eating junk food their whole life, what would be their motivation to change their habits? It's very similar to the way that America approached the issue of smoking. We must educate our youth about healthy choices and the detrimental consequences of eating fast food such as; obesity, heart disease and cancer. Then hopefully they will go home and ask mom and dad to please buy produce instead of french fries.
The garden also helps increase accessibility to produce since all the vegetables grown and harvested there are donated to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. It's a very hands on way to provide access to healthy food in our community."Calling All Volunteers." Hoover Y Park . YMCA of Central Ohio , n.d. Web. 10
Nov. 2011.
