Below is my action plan for how I want to help accomplish MDGs 7 and 8, which are about creating environmental stability and creating a connection between people.
By the year 2017, I want Chicago to have a community garden in every major neighborhood in the city. Community gardens are a very helpful and important way to ensure environmental sustainability and connect people to each other. Community gardens are a great answer to achieving Millenium-Development goals 7 and 8, which are about maintaining environmental sustainability and creating a global connection. This would be especially useful in a city, where environmental sustainability is hard to come by and connecting people is sometimes difficult. Community gardens would be sustainable by growing crops that were native to Chicago, these could be sourced locally and would require the least amount of work to keep them alive. The crops would also reduce carbon footprints by reducing travel for the crops to get to their destinations. The communities can begin the process by subsidising the gardens for the first year to encourage growth and giving those participating a tax break. The gardens would be tended to during the first year by task members who would be available to teach community members how to work with the garden and keep it alive. After a year, the gardens would be left to mostly the care of the communities. A way to measure the success of the community gardens is to get at least 30% of people in each community participating in taking care and getting produce from their community gardens. It is the hope that eventually almost everyone in the city of Chicago will have access to some kind of locally sourced produce.