Groups asked to help fight childhood hunger

Only a few straggling winter veggies are still growing in the Gateway Community Garden in Huntington, but the few people gathered there last week had already germinated an idea.

A group planning an interfaith ceremony in Commack on Martin Luther King Day is taking this year's theme of ending childhood hunger a step further by encouraging Huntington's churches, synagogues and other religious institutions to create community gardens on their land.

"We want to get the congregations to try and take a piece of their property and try and create a small community garden," said Richard Koubek, community outreach coordinator for Long Island Jobs With Justice and chair of the Interfaith Martin Luther King Planning Committee.

The gardens would be tended by members of the congregations, Koubek said, and the produce would go to food pantries and hunger organizations, such as Food Not Bombs, which distributes food once a week in Huntington Station.

For congregations that aren't able to create community gardens on their own property, raised beds will be available for that purpose in a special section of the town's Kubecka Community Garden in Greenlawn, Koubek said.

Last week, Koubek met with religious leaders and representatives of the Long Island Community Agricultural Network, which runs Gateway and the special section at Kubecka, for ideas on how to proceed. The group toured both gardens, which are dormant during the winter season, and LICAN co-founder Heather Forest guided the group through the rows that contained hardy lettuce, kale and cabbage able to withstand the 25-degree weather.

"A small amount of area can produce a tremendous amount of food," Forest said.

Rebecca Segers, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow, which sits on nine acres in Melville, said she was intrigued by the idea of growing food for the hungry, but was worried about getting enough volunteer labor among her small church of 160 members.

"This is a very exciting idea," Segers said. "But it's very labor intensive."

Kathleen Kufs, the children's minister at the Gathering of Light, a nondenominational group that meets on Saturdays at the Church of St. Lawrence of Canterbury in Dix Hills, said her group established a community garden last season at St. Lawrence, and is planning to do it again this year.

The garden yielded several bags of produce every few weeks that Kufs would take to several Huntington-area food pantries. She said she hopes to help other congregations who want to do the same -- and maybe even go beyond houses of worship.

"It's a collaborative effort. It's far reaching," Kufs said. "It's not just limited to churches and food pantries. Schools, I don't know where else. Definitely they have the land. And there are kids that want to get this started for their communities."

Upcoming celebration

"We Can End Childhood Hunger," an interfaith celebration, will take place Jan. 16 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center, 74 Hauppauge Rd., Commack. The event will include speeches, a children's choir and an exhibition of children's artwork, including a quilt children made about childhood hunger. A follow-up meeting for congregations interested in participating in the community garden project will take place Feb. 28 at the center.