Homeless Garden Project
Jane Wade, Executive Director
Darrie Ganzhorn, Services Coordinator <== I interviewed her
PO Box 617
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95061
(408) 426-3609

This impressive program offers a model of self-reliance, but strangely enough, it didn't start that way. The founders' initial impulse was more charitable than empowering, but luckily, they were sensitive enough to listen to the suggestions of their participants and quickly shifted course from simple charity into the more challenging realms of self-reliance.

It began in 1990 when Paul Lee, a professor of philosophy and herbalist, and Lynne Basehore, a local environmentalist, both advocates involved with the Santa Cruz Citizen's Committee for the Homeless, came up with the idea of creating a garden as a safe place and a beautiful place where the community's growing homeless population could spend their days cultivating the garden, enjoying its quiet beauty while growing themselves a little healthful food.

But it didn't take the homeless people long to see beyond that, Darrie Ganzhorn said. "They pushed beyond the concept of 'a beautiful and safe place' to a JOB," she recalled. "They didn't see it as food but as a way to economic self-reliance." This didn't meet with universal acclaim in Santa Cruz, where a lot of people were eager to feed the homeless but not as eager to teach them capitalism, but the idea prevailed, and the program quickly evolved into a commercial garden where homeless men (and women, too), would grow and sell food and flowers, learning gardening skills and work skills while making a few bucks.

With the help of some eager volunteers and benefactors (including the son of the actor Harrison Ford), several related projects evolved, all staffed by homeless workers who are paid $5 an hour for 16-hour work weeks while learning job skills in the course of a (flexible) three-year training program.