University of Dayton
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Many urban areas across the United States lack access to fresh, healthful foods and lush open green space. In an extraordinary statistic, the Dayton metropolitan area ranks worst in Ohio and 9th in the country in food hardship. Nearly every urban area in the Miami Valley is a food desert--the Dayton core is no exception.

Since 2015, to assist in combating this problem the University of Dayton's Hanley Sustainability Institute has partnered with East End Community Services and Mission of Mary Cooperative to initiate change within the urban regions of Dayton through the development of Lincoln Hill Gardens, a community greenspace and urban agriculture center. Lincoln Hill Gardens is transforming five acres of previously vacant land within the Twin Towers neighborhood into a sustainable, multipurpose site. Agricultural, educational, and recreational elements increase neighborhood access to fresh, healthful foods while offering open green space for community gatherings and nature play. A primary objective of the partnership is to maximize the opportunity for community members to participate meaningfully in the project.

University of Dayton students, faculty, and staff collaborate with representatives from East End Community Services and Mission of Mary Cooperative to enhance community-based research in topics that include site soil conditions and ecosystem services, residential food access, community-based assets, and neighborhood-based economic development strategies. University of Dayton students conduct home energy audits and support educational, native plant restoration, and agricultural efforts. Residents and local businesses have also attended participatory planning meetings to shape the site design into an asset than can be used by all community members.

https://udayton.edu/news/articles/2017/07/lincoln_hill_garden_update.php
https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/projects/lincoln-hill.php
https://udayton.edu/artssciences/ctr/hsi/galleries/lincolnhillgarden.php
https://udayton.edu/blogs/artssciences/2018-stories/18-02-28-vectren-gift-lincoln-hill.php
https://www.east-end.org/fare

University of Dayton, through grant funding from PNC Bank, supports the Community Nutrition Education program, an ongoing priority of connecting students to communities. These experiential learning internships link UD dietetics students with dietetics faculty and community leaders around nutrition education programming. Three UD students have been working with East End Community Services. Mentored by Diana Cuy Castellanos, these interns have:
- Developed and provided cooking demos for the farm market sites and led cooking nights at
Lincoln Hill Gardens and at the East End Community Services facility;
- Been integral to a children’s cooking and gardening project at Ruskin Elementary
Neighborhood School Center;
- Taught 3-4 days of nutrition classes per week with different grade levels at Miracle Makers
summer camp. They also prepared and served food for the salad bar twice a week, feeding
around 80 K-6 students per day;
- Helped with a weekly cooking class with the Youth Center at East End, which served up to 40
students per class to learn proper kitchen techniques and some elaborate recipes. They also
helped with gardening spark activities, like using food scraps to create natural dyes for fabric
(photos attached);
- Developing a neighborhood recipe book.

The mobile kitchen funded through in-kind monies from the Hanley Sustainability Institute has
been used for mobile pantry cooking demos and for summer programming with Miracle Makers.
It will be used this fall for more of the cooking demos at the mobile pantry and possibly other programming including the Miracle Makers program, backyard garden dinners, and more.