About us

Mission

To enable families and individuals living with food and financial insecurity and / or psycho-social problems to improve their health and autonomy through community gardening and collective kitchens.

Our mission is two-pronged:

- Food security

Our community gardening project strives to ensure that individuals or families living with food insecurity and socio-economic difficulties have direct access to healthy and fresh fruits and vegetables in exchange for their participation in the garden. Through training courses and gardening activities, participants acquire horticultural skills that help increase their food autonomy. In the same vein, we support groups of gardeners wishing to create a collective kitchen to learn culinary skills. Finally, last-resort food aid is offered.

- The promotion of the natural heritage

A project to revitalize the Petite Rivière Saint-Antoine site and the industrial district adjacent to the community garden is currently being developed.

Mission

History

Historique

Les Serres de Clara was founded in 1991.

In its first few years (1991-2005), Les Serres de Clara refurbished the Parc des Jardins in Saint-Antoine through extensive clean-up work, tree planting and creation of community gardens. Most of those projects were carried out as part of a social integration initiative.

In its second phase of operations (2006-2013), Les Serres de Clara gained momentum with the establishment of St-Jérôme Community Garden. The primary aim of this project, created under a broad partnership, is to increase the food autonomy of the disadvantaged members of the community. From 2007, an innovative initiative to support special-needs gardeners was launched.

In 2014 that the third phase saw the diversification of food security activities with the integration of a food assistance counter and the development of collective kitchens linked to the Community Garden.

The aim was to connect the three types of resources (garden, kitchen, food assistance), to streamline the process of mobilizing participants and enabling them to complete the “garden to table” food chain

Today, the activities have been consolidated and the enhancement of the woodland area around the Little Saint-Antoine River is one of the priority projects.