LifeCycles' History

LifeCycles' roots begin in 1994 in the soil of an international youth exchange. The focus of the exchange was on comparatively examining home environments and developing joint projects to enhance the quality of urban community life. LifeCycles partnered with a group from Santiago, Chile called "Generacion Alternativa." Together, we identified a common need... "to spread awareness about food issues, and to get youth active in the promotion and creation of food gardens in urban areas."

In response, we collaboratively developed and ran parallel community garden projects. Underlying these projects was a common understanding: "by silently participating in the current system of global economics, we not only endorse its social and environmental policies but literally pay to maintain them with our consumer dollars."

With a growing understanding of the links between globalization, the corporatization of food systems, environmental degradation and structures of human inequality, the founding members of LifeCycles decided to act. Under the umbrella of the community garden project, LifeCycles undertook four initiatives that still form the building blocks of our constitution and our programs a decade later.

These four initiatives include:

• Addressing the shortage of community gardens in Victoria, beginning with mapping needs and supplies for each.
• Creating model gardens promoting organic methods.
• Coordinating a sharing backyard program to link landowners with individuals who were landless but desired to garden.
• Organizing conferences for high school students and a series of community workshops to raise awareness about food issues and to encourage activism.

The international context of LifeCycles has continued to be integral to Lifecycles work in its education programs, youth internship programs, and partnerships with overseas organizations.

Among the first of LifeCycles' projects were community gardens where food was grown for soup kitchens. With an understanding of the difficulties involved in overcoming health and wellness issues for persons living on a budget that did not provide for fresh produce, LifeCycles offered a practical, logical, and hopeful solution.

In 1996, in its best of hidden Victoria awards, Monday magazine honored LifeCycles with the best garden. It said, "Sorry Butchart, we're going with LifeCycles' 'Our Backyard' garden beside St Vincent de Paul's on View Street. The converted vacant lot is a sliver of the good earth in the concrete jungle, and one of the best community projects of the decade, supplying soup kitchens with produce and the neighborhood with a place to take root. The door is open all day for anyone who wants to see what food looks like before it gets to the grocery store."

Sadly, that garden was closed in 2002 when the owner took back the land for development-this is one of many issues that make it clear to us, that in order to secure the survival of these rare and special spaces, we need financial resources beyond program funding.

Local action is the singular most effective way to effect environmental restoration and protection, and while the maxim "think globally act locally" may seem simplistic, even dated, it is still the best model for social and environmental action.

This principle is the cornerstone upon which LifeCycle's was founded and is why LifeCycles has attracted so many dedicated and inspired individuals over the years, and continues to endure as one of Victoria's best-loved community organizations. LifeCycles is empowering because it makes sense. It creates possibilities.

LifeCycles work makes people happy, which is something we should never undervalue: it feels good to work in the earth, to plant seeds, watch them grow, to eat what you've grown, to feel self sufficient.