Building sustainable food systems through local gardening projects: Testing the impact of minigrants on generating project action

ocal gardening projects are proving to be viable components of a more sustainable and equitable food system. While interest in gardening and local food systems is growing, barriers limit the translation of interest into action. The challenge of overcoming hindrances to action initiation has been met by many community engagement projects through minigrant programs. PURPOSE: While an abundance of gardening minigrant programs exist, research evaluating the effectiveness of this approach does not. This mixed method experimental study begins to fill this void in the literature. Only the quantitative aspect of the study is reported in this thesis, which evaluated the likelihood of minigrant recipients expanding or initiating a garden compared to a control group. METHODS: Participants for this study were recruited from the 64 attendees in a food gardening workshop held in a small city in Wyoming in April 2011. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n=31) who received small minigrants and a control group (n=22) who did not. Each member of the intervention group received a...