Lafayette College
EN-9: Community Partnerships

Lafayette College is a member of the LVAIC consortium, Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges, along with five other Lehigh Valley Institutions. Lafayette College supports the LVAIC Sustainability Director's position. Lafayette also helps organize and participates in the bi-annual sustainability conference.

Vegetables in the Community (VIC) is in it's fourth year (part a) and is a collaboration between Lafayette and the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership. The West Ward is Easton's most economically depressed neighborhood and is a food desert. This project aggregates food from community gardens and urban farms in Easton, including Lafayette's LaFarm, for a pay-as-you-can Veggie Stand in the neighborhood. The proceeds from the stand fund the community gardens that help provide the food, helping make the program sustainable economically (part b).

The college's role has been to fund three students each summer who manage and operate it and to support personnel at Easton's urban farm. These students work with people in the neighborhood who help run the stand, provide recipes, and are increasingly involved (part c).

The City of Easton is also involved through funding and support. Easton is a small community--the college, the city government were obvious stakeholder groups. The West Ward Neighborhood Partnership works to improve the quality of life in the West Ward, and the community gardens and urban farm are an important part of what they do. They have programs throughout the West Ward community, and so again are an obvious stakeholder group. The Easton Hospital is a more recent addition to the partnership. It is located just west of the West Ward and has an increasing number of community outreach activities. Because of the connection between food and health, they are another excellent partner. (part d)

The program builds resiliency by connecting people with locally grown fresh produce, educating about nutritional values, and eventually creating a self-sustaining program that funds itself long term. The program is multi-lingual, builds a sense of community, and has an additional health impacts partnerships with Easton Hospital. The long term goals of the project are to institutionalize systemic change by improving the health and well-being of West Ward residents, provide access to and appreciation for healthy produce, increase community involvement, and have a long term, self-sustaining program that distributes local produce to folks in Easton's poorest neighborhood (part e).