Padre Park Community Food Forest

In this session you will hear from San Antonio Food Policy Council President & owner of Local Sprout, Mitch Hagney, and Nadia Gaona, Lead Community Health Worker for Healthy Neighborhoods at the San Antonio Metro Health District. The two local community leaders will discuss how they brought the local government, advocates, & the community together to co-create a vision for the first large-scale food forest on the Southside of San Antonio (SA). Urban & Regional Planning

(URP) graduate students from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) will facilitate a panel discussion between the leaders of the Padre Park Community Food Forest, & its connection to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Resilient Communities.



Discussion on why this project matters to UTSA Urban & Regional Planning graduate students & Southside residents:

- Identifying food desert areas, & opportunity areas in underserved communities.

- Connection to city, county, & community plans & policies

- Mission & Museum Reach of SA River Walk

- SA Tomorrow

- Funding Sources

- Community Advocacy, Outreach, & Engagement

- Grassroot movement

- Community Empowerment

- Food systems

- Self-sustainability

- Environmental Systems

- Padre Park lays in a floodplain

- Placemaking

- Park

- Food programing

- Connection to History and Culture

- Community Building



Outcomes: How to replicate this project elsewhere in San Antonio and in communities beyond!



The Padre Park Community Food Forest values are as follows:

"This project will center a core set of values, which will be called upon in all outreach efforts, project designs, & Food Forest events further down the road. The Food Forest will always center community strength, voice, and culture throughout the planning & building process. This means always prioritizing accessibility, both in planning & site design. The well-being of the community surrounding the site itself is one of the highest concerns for project planners. Pursuant to this, we will always be transparent & communicative with Food Forest neighbors. In design & execution, we always seek to be creative & helpful, & mindful. Channeling these values from committee members, community members, & community leaders will ensure that the project serves everyone’s needs. This project is built on grassroots knowledge production, & will always stay committed to group, not individual decision making. As new challenges and opportunities for working with the community emerge, we expect everyone working on the project to remain bold, adaptable, & open to change.



By transforming this Southside park into an urban food forest & edible gardens, we will create a teachable example of growing our own food in public spaces for a more sustainable future. We are neighbors in the city that would like to see more food grown in public spaces. This is a great opportunity to grow food, grow relations, & grow an increasingly

self-sustainable society” -Food Policy Council of San Antonio,



https://www.foodpolicysa.org/initiatives/urban-agriculture/food-forest/