Cookbook and Community Building

Community gardens are becoming more common every year. Many communities come together over shared land to grow food for their families, especially low-income communities. However, how do these people build community if they do not know each other? How does a group of people work together to sustain and share a garden? My integrated service project used the creation of a cookbook to give families in a specific community garden the opportunity to build community, create traditions and socialize. Building community can be challenging, but the cookbook gave all of the families a shared common goal and an opportunity to interact through weekly meetings and activities.