Our Second Initiative

Silver Spring, Maryland

In a neighborhood where 82% of children qualify for free and reduced meals, KinshipNow is developing a culturally relevant food garden as the entry point for deeper community work. The garden addresses a specific, documented gap: Families who depend on school meals lose access to food during the summer months.

This is Piscataway territory. KinshipNow is actively and carefully building a connection with Piscataway culture bearers, with the intention of grounding the garden’s design and educational programming in the knowledge of the people whose land this is. That relationship has not yet formed, and we won’t pretend otherwise. How it develops will be on Piscataway terms.

The garden is a beginning. As the community relationship deepens, the work will grow into whatever the community says is needed — whether that’s shared resources, local food networks, or educational programming built around kinship and reciprocity. Children who face food insecurity will be participants in a relationship with the living world that produces what they need.

So far, we’ve resourced:

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Urban landscapes are where Indigenous governance and reciprocal relationships have been most aggressively severed. Working here means acknowledging that the conditions for this work often have to be built from the ground up.