(Jan. 4) -- While Raul Lozano, 55, found himself burned out from the constant fund-raising involved with being the executive director of Teatro Vision, one of the oldest and most successful Latino theater companies in the country, he knew he was too young to retire.
The Bay Area man worked in his garden, wondering what to do next. What he came up with was the perfect blend of his pre-theater background in social service agencies and a childhood spent with parents who were farmworkers in central California.
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Maria J. Avila, San Jose Mercury News/MCT
Project manager Raul Lozano visits the garden of a family participating in La Mesa Verde, a program that teaches the poor to grow their own food.
When Lozano looked around his largely immigrant neighborhood and saw the poverty that surrounded him, he had an idea. "Why can't somebody teach the people in my neighborhood to grow food?" Lozano asked himself. "Why can't that person be me?"
Lozano founded La Mesa Verde (The Green Table), a nonprofit that teaches poor families to grow vegetables in their backyards, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The organization has been a huge success -- attracting donors and volunteers eager to work directly with families who can't afford healthy, organically grown food.
La Mesa Verde supplies 4-by-8-foot planter boxes and other supplies needed. The 30 families currently enrolled in the program attend classes on organic gardening and nutrition.
The backyard gardens don't eliminate the need for families to go to food pantries, but the participants are now saving money and eating more fresh fruits and vegetables than before.
Lozano's goal is to have 5,000 families — and 10,000 planter boxes — enrolled in La Mesa Verde and even have surplus produce to donate to area food banks.
To read more, go to the San Jose Mercury News.
