Our Turley/NorthTulsa Area June 26 Orchard Event, Community Health Focus, and More This Summer

What a great summer is underway in the far northside 74126 and 74130 zipcodes. Here is your invitation to events coming up, and updates, and opportunities to be a part of our mission of renewing community, empowering residents, and growing healthy lives and neighborhoods, through small acts of justice done with great love.

First, the Big News:
You and others are invited to attend the public event on Sunday, June 26 beginning at noon here at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. as we are joined by the National Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and Edy's Fruit Bars marking the planting of the new orchard that day that was recently won in a national competition for our emerging Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark.

While we were not happy with the selection of the day for beginning the orchard and festivities, which was picked by the organizations sponsoring the national competition, we will be making it a momentus day for the far northside anyway as we combat food deserts and blight in our area with this project we have called the "miracle among the ruins." We hope you will be there, to receive our thanks for your support, and to see the latest developments, and enjoy the festivities, and tell others, and dream of ways to partner with the park and duplicate it elsewhere.

It is hard to believe that just one year ago we were still trying vigorously to raise the funds to buy the rundown abandoned property from N. Kenosha to Johnstown and 60th to 61st Streets atop a hill from where you can see downtown Tulsa and other landmarks. We not only were able to raise the funds, but used the property to help us buy another bigger more historic rundown abandoned church building in our area and turn it into a community center asset, and then this Spring we managed to garner enough online support to win the orchard in the first round of voting at www.communitiestakeroot.com.

While we will be there all day with volunteers working on the site with the arborist from the Fruit Tree Foundation (and we hope you will join us anytime from 8 am on), we will pause at noon for the announcements and recognitions and words of support. Edy's Fruit Bars will be giving away free fruit bars, building a bench for the site to commemorate the occasion, and the arborist will be unveiling the fruit trees planted and turning on the irrigation system installed by the foundation, and then he will be conducting a free public workshop for our residents on fruit tree planting and care. The trees are being purchased from local nursery Worley's in north Tulsa County.

We have been installing and planting community garden beds already as well as preparing the site at the park for the orchard section. We also are hoping we can announce the awarding of a new grant too, which we have applied for in partnership with local Freedom Bank and with the help of the USDA Tallgrass RC&D, but even if it is otherwise we will be able to show the vision of what will be coming.

I, unfortunately, had previous travel and work plans for the end of June and will be unable to be there (which is a double shame since it is my birthday too), all the more reason why I hope you will come and support one another and residents, and contact Bonnie Ashing as park project leader and coordinator of the event If you have questions or rsvps, please contact her at bjashing@aol.com or 918 346 3475. Please feel free to forward this on to others in your associations as well.

Again, at a time when governments are shutting parks and community centers, we are growing our own from the grassroots for the grassroots.

In Other News:
Summer Cafe at Cherokee
We managed to get the Summer Cafe program to be held at Cherokee School again this summer under our supervision and we are operating it from June 8 to Aug. 5 because we are a community organization and not dependent on school staff to operate it on their schedule. Already we are seeing more children and youth than we had the past two years. Free lunch for anyone in the world, we say, who is 18 or under at the school cafeteria, 6001 N. Peoria Ave., from 11:30 to 12:30.

Austin Guests Serving Our Area
We were joined recently by members of Wildflower Church in Austin as we cleared the park site for the orchard, as we put together some of the garden beds for the park, as we created the new Prairie Trails native plant Park right across the street from our new community park, as we built the Muhammad Ali Peace Garden at the community center, as we beautified and cleaned up the major welcome intersection on North Lewis and 66th St., as we planted a garden bed with residents at Sarah's Residential Living Center near McLain High School, and worked on projects at the center itself. We are looking forward to a group coming from Dallas at the end of July. Groups for a day or more are always welcome to come learn and serve.

Partnerships for Health With OU
In July we will be partnering with OU Community Health to conduct health attitude surveys in our area, something that will also benefit residents economically with incentives for taking the survey, along with local businesses where the incentives will be good for. This is the initial public step in our movement toward launching the community health worker program in north and west Tulsa, a project we have been working on with OU for a few years now, even when we had the clinic; now that the clinics have been closed in north Tulsa this project is more needed than ever, and will help radically reshape health care delivery by creating neighborhood health mentors for those who are the most frequent users of the emergency rooms and urgent care.
One of the places and partnerships for our health attitude surveys will be at the annual summer carnival for the YWCA northside and Tulsa Health Dept. Saturday July 16 from 11 am to 2 pm, at the YWCA on 54th and N. Madison. Come support this free fun for all carnival and get great health information and screenings and see our booth.
We are also working to set up in July our community health care conversations at our center again this summer with neighborhood residents and with summer interns from OU. These are always educational conversations for all. More info as we get the dates set.
And we had a very good poverty consciousness raising workshop with local residents and the incoming graduate social work students at OU which we helped coordinate and held at O'Brien Recreation Center recently.

Meetings and Movies and More
We hosted and helped to coordinate recent meetings to create a leadership and planning focus group to concentrate on issues of how to attack the growing problems of abandoned commercial and residential properties in our unincorporated side, how to create a plan for growth and community vision here north of 56th St. in the wake of the closing of the Cherokee School, and how to bring conditions of unhealthy and blighted sites to the attention of the county commissioners and departments. We are looking again at steps toward incorporation, not as an end in itself, but as a possible means to the bigger end of community renewal. Attacking the numerous abandoned and dangerous sites near our children is the common top project for this new leadership group. Our next planning meeting will be at the Center Aug. 4. Also remember the Turley community association meeting is Tuesday June 28 at 7 pm at O'Brien Recreation Center. Congratulations to Northridge Neighborhood Association for its first meeting this past week for the area around McLain High.

....Speaking of Cherokee, and Alcott also, in our service area which were both closed as Tulsa public schools, we have met with area legislators to explore options on how to keep the buildings in community use.

We had a wonderful time hosting and watching and discussing the live webstream from the Childrens Defense Fund and the documentary on PBS about the Freedom Riders during the 50th anniversary of that pivotal time in civil rights history. We also again sponsored a public showing of the Dorothy Day Story movie Entertaining Angels and related it to our work and vision here. And we were once again one of the few presences from our whole northside area, along with the YWCA northside, in the Tulsa Pride Parade and Festivities sponsored by the Equality Center.

We have supported and will continue promoting the North Tulsa Farmers Market at Tulsa Community College NE campus on Wednesdays from 2 to 5 pm and Saturday mornings on 56th St. between Highway 75 and N. Lewis. We have our ongoing Neighborhood Safety group the last Thursdays of the month; weekly recovery 12 step groups, our clothing and food pantry (our computer center is temporarily shut down as the computers are in need of updating and repairing, stay tuned for relaunch news in July).

And we worship on Sunday mornings with conversation and common meal and service to others for all who are interested in a free universalist Christian missional community. The next two Sundays we will "be the church" in the park as we gather to serve and celebrate and prepare for the Orchard Event.

Be a partner with us in person and/or through donating to make all this happen; no one draws a salary; one hundred percent into mission; go to www.turleyok.blogspot.com and donate; you can use debit/credit cards as paypal is not required.

Thanks, blessings, and more to come,

Ron Robinson
Executive Director, A Third Place Community Foundation, operating among its many projects The Welcome Table Community Center and The Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark
renewing community, empowering residents, growing healthy lives and neighborhoods
5920 N. Owasso, Turley, OK 74126
www.turleyok.blogspot.com
www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com
www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com
www.uuchristian.org

A Simple Ask For A Big Need: A Little Extra Right Now For Those Without Extra

Very quickly: We are doing a little extra here for those without, and so could you help us with a little extra you might have? We are half way there raising the funds for the free daily lunch program we coordinate here for children in our area and partnering with Cherokee School. Need $500 to go. Have already served more in our first week than we did first week last year...Also, because of the early planting date for the orchard, three months before our plans, we have had to deplete the account to pay for installing electric, and bringing in large bin and for removal of all the debris illegally dumped on the site over the years the former houses there were abandoned and the old trees on site still damaged and dangerous from the 2007 ice storm.

You don't have to have a paypal account to use the donate button on this page, and it is safe and easy with debit/credit card, or send check payable to A Third Place Community Foundation, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley, OK 74126. We don't get the chance to send out all the thank yous as we should to those who have supported us and meant so much to us, so consider this thanks in advance and blessings from those whom you bless.

And keep us in your prayers as we await word on a $25,000 Federal Home Loan Bank grant which we should find out about later this month for our "miracle among the ruins" park project, but even if we get the news so much is needed now to get in the orchard and get set for a humdinger of a Fourth of July Party on the hill where just a year ago there was so much blight and danger. We also have our Prairie Trails Park almost finished as well across the street from the Welcome Table Park, and next to the resident-made trail from subdivison to store they walk each day a mile away.

100 percent of donations go into missons; no one draws a salary yet. Don't think your little extra doesn't make a huge difference in lives here; it is the only way we have been able to accomplish all the amazing things we have.

All Invited To the New Orchard Planting Event Party Sunday, June 26, at our new community park 6005 N. Johnstown

You are all invited to attend the Orchard Event for the public on Sunday, June 26 beginning at noon along with the National Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and Edy's Fruit Bars marking the planting of the new orchard that day that was recently won in a national competition for our emerging Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. Please pass this on to others.

Volunteers are always needed to help us plant that day or to come help us clean and prepare the site before hand, and to take on garden plots already installed for growing food for families and our food pantry. To volunteer call project leader Bonnie Ashing, bjashing@aol.com, or 918 3463475.

We were not happy with the selection of the day for beginning the orchard and festivities, which was picked by the organizations sponsoring the national competition, because of short notice, people being gone, and not optimal for planting season, but we will be making it a momentus day for the far northside anyway as we combat food deserts and blight in our area with this project we have called the "miracle among the ruins."

We hope you will be there, to receive our thanks, and to see the latest developments, and enjoy the festivities, and tell others, and dream of ways to partner with the park and duplicate it elsewhere. It is hard to believe that just one year ago we were still trying vigorously to raise the funds to buy the rundown abandoned property from N. Kenosha to Johnstown and 60th to 61st Streets atop a hill from where you can see downtown Tulsa and other landmarks. We not only were able to raise the funds, but used the property to help us buy another bigger more historic rundown abandoned church building in our area and turn it into a community center asset, and then this Spring we managed to garner enough online support to win the orchard in the first round of voting at www.communitiestakeroot.com.

While we will be there all day with volunteers working on the site with the arborist from the Fruit Tree Foundation, we will pause at noon for the announcements and recognitions and words of support. Edy's Fruit Bars will be giving away free fruit bars, building a bench for the site to commemorate the occasion, and the arborist will be unveiling the fruit trees planted and turning on the irrigation system installed by the foundation. The trees are being purchased from local nursery Worley's in north Tulsa County.

We have been installing and planting community garden beds already as well as preparing the site at the park for the orchard section. We also are hoping we can announce the awarding of a new grant too, which we have applied for in partnership with local Freedom Bank and with the help of the USDA Tallgrass RC&D, but even if it is otherwise we will be able to show the vision of what will be coming.

.

We Won

Thank you to all who supported and voted for us in the national competition to win a fruit tree orchard for our area. Please feel free to share the following news release and announcement on the orchard, the park, the victory party, and the dedication this week of the Muhammed Ali Peace Garden at the center.
...............

The "TulsaNorth/Turley" neighborhoods will receive a free fruit tree orchard after winning in national online voting competition during the first round of the contest sponsored by the National Fruit Tree Foundation and Edy's Fruit Bars.

More than 21,000 votes were cast from April 15 to May 31 for the proposed park project sponsored by A Third Place Community Foundation, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. The local volunteer nonprofit came in fourth place in the first round out of 120 community contestants, and the top five winners of each round receive an orchard. A party to celebrate the victory will be held at the orchard site, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., on Thursday, June 9 from 6 to 8 pm. All supporters and area residents are welcome.

A team from the Fruit Tree Foundation will come to the northside area and work with area residents to plant the trees, to install an irrigation system, and to teach community workshops on growing fruit trees in the area, according to Rev. Ron Robinson, executive director of A Third Place Foundation.

The orchard will be planted at the emerging northside "pocket park" begun by the local group that will also include community gardens, play and social and eating areas, and a gazebo for bands. The Welcome Table KitchenGardenPark will be located at 6005 N. Johnstown on an acre overlooking downtown Tulsa where abandoned houses recently stood amid other trash and debris. The foundation purchased the property last year, and had the homes removed and is currently working on preparing the site for the start of the gardens.

"We are located in the 74126 zipcode which has the lowest life expectancy and many nutritional deficiencies," Robinson said. "The park and now the fruit tree orchard, along with our other gardens and health programs and summer daily feeding program at Cherokee School which starts June 8 through Aug. 5, and work with our area partners is aimed at elevating food justice and reversing these trends among our people."

Robinson said once the local group finds out when the planting day will be slated, a call will go out for volunteers to help with the planting, to attend the workshops, and help launch the new community food project.

A Third Place operates both the emerging park as well as the The Welcome Table Community Center and renewal projects in 74126 and 74130 zip codes.

It also received this Spring a grant to create a Muhammad Ali Peace Garden Grant for producing vegetables for families in the area. The garden will be located at the community center with the planting taking place the week of June 6-10 and dedication ceremony being held on Friday, June 10 at 7 pm. Volunteers are welcome. For more information call 918-794-4637, or 918-691-3223, or 918-430-1150 .

Background information and articles on the park can be read at http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2011/04/all-videos-news-design-plans-on-our.html. More information on the orchard competition, held each year, can be seen at www.communitiestakeroot.com.