This Woman Built 17 Gardens for Her Community and Isn't Stopping!

I'm Pula Vadila. I'm a gardener, artist, environmental activist, and I founded Grow Black Hudson, which has raised $10,000 in two weeks and has built 17 raised bed gardens, people's homes for them to have fresh food. Grow Black Hudson is a movement to bring us back to our connection with our food and our knowledge of our food and knowing where it comes from, knowing how it grows, knowing how we can use it to sustain ourselves. I was raised here in Hudson, New York. Growing up so it's been very important for me to know my environment and know the community and know how to be able to learn and share with the community as well. Just was important for me to make sure that we're all receiving or at least do my best to create a space where we all can receive like similar access to these things like fresh food, organic food. I just started it at $200 because it wasn't you know just like whatever like we just need some soil and some pots and then from there like people were donating and it just like started to get like grander. It just like really inspired me to go full throttle you know. I got into a very beautiful space of trust. Now there's 17 raised bed gardens officially established. Food is absolutely a weapon and it's a weapon in the way that they push processed food to continue to cause illnesses and all these different things that make us suffer and have like long-term effects. They're literally like attacking our community by this this processed food and this this ill food that they're feeding us. It's also a weapon on our part when we come back into our food sovereignty and into our knowledge and into our self-sufficiency. Having the gardens right there in their home you don't have to go so far to get your groceries. You're able to like harvest right from home and you know also know that it's coming from a fresh place. All the produce is organic. The soil is organic. I feel like it you know changes how you think too as far as like security goes having food security. As far as like the families that have never grown anything at all now they have this lush garden. Having it there changes the whole cycle of like I grew this what I have here and I'm using I'm cooking it go to my family. It's like feeding bellies like the love I put into these plants is like really nurturing all of these elements. The need it brings the families together. It brings healing together community healing together. It creates a connection with us as far as being able to all have like growth and not like our own paces of growth you know so it helps us to also check in on each other about these things. I see myself as a guide as well as far as how I'm able to reintroduce these elements of our connection to the earth to the soil and to our ancestral wisdom as well that's very much deep within us. So many people who weren't growing at all last year didn't even know like anything about planting seeds like are growing now. It's encouraging to know that you know just even you as one person can make a big difference.