On Saturday, January 19, 2019, graduate students and Dr. MacCarty from the OSU Humanitarian Engineering Lab volunteered at Benton County’s “Produce for the People” as part of the Martin Luther King Day of Service. An annual event that honors the legacy of Dr. King, the MLK Day of Service offers a wide variety of service opportunities for students, faculty, and Corvallis residents, with the mission of building community. One such service opportunity was gardening with Produce for the People, a non-profit organization that started through a partnership with OSU and funded by the National Institute of Health. What began as a short term research project investigating the impact of community gardens on the health of low-income Latinx residents developed into a 13,5000 sq. ft. garden that produced over 4000 lbs of produce in 2017. In addition to providing garden plots for individuals, Produce for the People donates food to local agencies including the South Corvallis Food Bank, Community Outreach, and soup kitchens. For the day of service, Humanitarian Engineering volunteers from the  got their hands dirty cleaning the fields for tilling and weeding, while other volunteers cleaned plant pots for reuse and carried mulch for planting. Produce for the People operates year round, and are seeking volunteers of any age and gardening ability. Times for volunteer work parties are listed on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pftpgarden/.

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