Building Capacity FOR Building Capacity: Program Outcomes of Community Gardening in Central Appalachia

Central Appalachia has long been associated with negative environmental, social, and economic ramifications of uneven development, extra-local corporate control, and extraction of natural resources. Coal production has been... [ view full abstract ]

Central Appalachia has long been associated with negative environmental, social, and economic ramifications of uneven development, extra-local corporate control, and extraction of natural resources. Coal production has been critical to Central Appalachian economies, yet industry declines during recent decades have exacerbated long-term trends of poverty and unemployment. These socioeconomic issues, combined with environmental pollution and limited social welfare programs, have contributed to low individual and community wellbeing for generations. In response to these issues and the failure of many top-down strategies toward alleviating them, a number of grassroots initiatives have emerged across the region. Community food security programs are one such type of initiative, applauded for their outcomes in urban case studies, but vastly understudied in rural environments. To examine the impacts of such initiatives in more rural settings, a program evaluation was conducted in collaboration with the Berea College-based Grow Appalachia initiative, an organization that financially and logistically supported 32 different community-based gardening programs across six Appalachian states in 2016. Informed by urban and rural community capacity-building theories (Chaskin 2001; Flora and Flora 2015), data was collected using a mixed mode survey distributed in January/February 2017 to current and past program participants at the thirty-two 2016 Grow Appalachia partner sites (N=1741, Response Rate=32%). Controlling for individual demographics, this presentation uses multivariate analyses to specifically examine the relationship between program characteristics and perceived program outcomes and barriers. For example, how does lack of access to transportation or childcare relate to how program participation affects household financial security (or not)? How does lack of access to flat and/or arable land affect program participation improve household access to fresh foods (or not)? Preliminary results suggest that while the program benefits reported by participants are mediated by household income, program type, and prevalence of personal/family health issues, community-based gardening programs still offer many benefits to rural communities and residents. This presentation will share both final statistical models as well as implications for rural community development theory, practice, and future research.