• In 2001, Fourth Presbyterian Church bought property in the Cabrini-Green community on Chicago Avenue between Hudson and Cleveland.
• This purchase is an outgrowth of Fourth Church’s forty-year involvement with the children and families living in Cabrini-Green.
• As Cabrini-Green develops into a mixed-income neighborhood, Fourth Church intends to be a key partner in this process.
• Fourth Church is committed to helping make this mixed-income neighborhood a thriving diverse community and ensuring that present residents are not cast aside in this process of transformation.
• As the first step in this important endeavor, Fourth Church transformed the Chicago Avenue site into a community garden, as a way to strengthen the church’s relationship with the families and children in the Cabrini community.

• To develop and participate in a community garden with members of the Cabrini and Fourth Presbyterian Church communities on the Fourth Church Chicago Avenue site
• To strengthen ties between the two communities
• To support families and children in the Cabrini community during this time of tremendous change

• The Chicago Avenue Community Garden is working with Growing Power, a nationally recognized leader in urban agriculture, to install a vegetable garden on the Chicago Avenue site.
• Growing Power has worked with a number of organizations to establish community gardens in urban settings.
• Growing Power will help provide training and oversight during the summer for the volunteers who participate in the community garden project.
• In 2005, the Chicago Avenue Community Garden is also working with Greencorps, a project of the Chicago Department of Environment. Greencorps’ mission is to promote environmental stewardship and improve the quality of life by establishing natural spaces that are safe, healthy, and sustainable. The Chicago Avenue Community Garden is working with Greencorps to make improvements to our physical gardening space and to receive training in gardening design and ornamental plantings.

For more information, contact the Project Light Leadership Team at PLLeadership@fourthchurch.org.