Lifetime Membership Has Its Privileges!

Yes, that’s me on stage totally excited to accept my lifetime membership with the American Community Garden Association (ACGA) in Houston, Texas during the ACGA 2023 conference. My lifetime membership holds significant personal meaning for me. It represents a lifelong commitment to supporting and promoting community gardening, a cause that I deeply believe in and am passionate about.

First and foremost, being a lifetime member of ACGA signifies my dedication to fostering community connections and sustainability through gardening. It means that I am invested in the long-term success and growth of community gardens across the nation, understanding their vital role in enhancing local food security, promoting environmental stewardship, and creating inclusive spaces for people to come together.

As a lifetime member, and newly elected board member as of 2024, I have the privilege of ongoing involvement and support for ACGA's initiatives, programs, and efforts.

Whether it's attending conferences, participating in workshops, or engaging in outreach activities, my membership provides me with a platform to collaborate, exchange ideas, and learn from fellow members.

I encourage you to become a lifetime member too, it comes with the privilege of making a lasting impact on the world around us. You get the privilege of contributing to the creation of healthier, more sustainable communities for generations to come.

By: Merlon Harper

Celebrating a New CCRH Role: Head of Special Initiatives and External Partnerships

CCRH is proud to announce a meaningful leadership transition within our team—one that honors a legacy of deep commitment and opens new opportunities.

We congratulate Gisela Salgado on reaching an incredible milestone: 20 years of service with CCRH! For the majority of that time, Gisela led our nationally recognized Internship Program, shaping it into a model for cultivating new BIPOC talent in affordable housing. Today, we celebrate not only her tenure but also her exciting transition into a new role as Head of Special Initiatives and External Partnerships—a position she has held since the beginning of this year.

Gisela’s journey in the affordable housing field began as a CCRH intern, placed with Community HousingWorks in San Diego. What followed was two decades of dedicated leadership, through which the Internship Program evolved into a nationally recognized model for recruiting, training, and supporting emerging BIPOC leaders—especially from rural, low-income, and farmworker communities.

We also honor the vision of Ana Baiz-Torres, the program’s founder, who entrusted Gisela with the program’s future and whose legacy lives on in a growing network of passionate, justice-driven affordable housing practitioners and leaders.

The Internship Program was founded on the belief that those most impacted by housing injustice—immigrant families, rural communities, and people of color—must be at the forefront of housing solutions. Gisela’s lived experience as the daughter of a migrant farmworker and granddaughter of a Bracero laborer rooted her commitment to this mission and fueled her passion to extend access to career and leadership pathways in the affordable housing field.

Today, the Internship Program continues to thrive under the leadership of Austyn Perry, CCRH’s Leadership Development Programs Director. Austyn brings strong vision and dedication to the interns, deepening the program’s impact through enhanced systems, programming, and partnerships. We’re deeply grateful to the alumni and supporters whose mentorship, insight, and advocacy continue to sustain this important effort.

In her new role, Gisela leads the launch of the Rural Housing Visionary Organizational Leadership Program, a new initiative shaped by alumni feedback and CCRH member and stakeholder input. This program supports mid-career BIPOC affordable housing practitioners by offering advanced leadership development, technical skills training, and allyship development for supervisors and executive leaders. She is joined in this work by former CCRH Internship Program participants Matt Huerta and Eric Diaz, who are serving as consultants.

Gisela is also focused on strengthen external partnerships, deepening our organizational commitment to collaboration, shared leadership, and collective impact. These efforts support CCRH’s mission to advocate for a thriving rural California that grows affordable housing for rural, tribal, and farmworker families and communities.

We are deeply grateful for Gisela’s leadership, both past and present. Please join us in celebrating this exciting new chapter and supporting her continued contributions to the affordable housing field. We look forward to the impact ahead—not only for CCRH, but for the communities we serve across California.

Health Benefits of Bread

In 2020, the average American utilized one package of bread every week. The nutritional value of bread is in doubt because so many households rely on bread products as a mainstay for their meals throughout the day. You should be aware of the health benefits of bread if you or your family consume it frequently or even daily. View the bread nutrition of many items, including those you probably consume practically every day, in this guide to learn about the health advantages of bread.

Bread is a common pantry essential. They virtually always have it on available and include it into all of their daily meals. Whether you toast it, use it to make sandwiches, or incorporate it into other dishes, you might wonder if bread is healthful. It's best to avoid responding to that question with a blanket "yes" due to the wide variety of bread products and varieties available. But several bread varieties have health advantages.

Overall, whether bread is healthy for you depends on the goods you select. You want goods produced by a reputable company using high-quality ingredients. The influence on your health will also depend on how you consume bread goods. You should consume bread in moderation, like with everything else, to prevent any negative effects. Depending on what else you consume and the type of bread product you're enjoying, some people advise restricting yourself to one serving of bread each meal or per day. According to your diet, review the nutrition information on the bread and follow the serving recommendations or consume less at once.

Pay close attention to the foods you eat alongside your bread. The spreads or sandwich ingredients you put on a piece of bread, English muffin, or bagel might affect how healthy your meal is as a whole. Think about spreading low-fat or comparable healthy substitutes for your preferred spreads on bread. To receive the maximum health advantages from bread, balance what you add on sandwiches and think about what else you consume during the day.

Advantages of Healthy Food

As we like to say, great cuisine begins with people who want to spread goodness for their clients' guests, their communities, and the Earth. We concentrate on expertly prepared foods that satisfy the palates of our a la carte diners while also benefiting Mother Nature.

Most of this concept can be boiled down to one item about which we are extraordinarily passionate: offering wholesome cuisine through organic catering.

There are numerous benefits to picking a caterer who focuses on health when you are selecting one for your upcoming event. Each benefit, whether it be the range of selections or the fresh food, is equally significant.

At Eco Caters, we're strong believers in the value of healthy catering, delicious food, and carefully crafting each meal. We would like to believe that many of our coworkers who are passionate about healthy nutrition share this sentiment.

For this reason, we've put together a thorough guide detailing the main benefits of selecting healthy catering for your upcoming event.

Because we are here to spread the message and because we are aware that every healthy element counts!

The availability of fresh ingredients is one of the main benefits of eating well. Fresh ingredients are what elevate an ordinary dish to extraordinary status. One of the essential components of a healthy diet is using fresh products. For lunch or dinner, they add color, flavor, and texture to everything from salads to sandwiches.

Carrots that are fresh have a distinct texture from those that are frozen, and fresh fish flakes differently than frozen fish. The outcome is packed with wholesome goodness when caterers use fresh foods as their foundation and grow from there. The freshness of each ingredient in healthy catering, which covers anything from farmers' market salads to grass-fed meat, enhances the whole experience for guests or clients.

From Beirut to New York City

Manousheh is a specialty bakery in the heart of New York City. Here you’ll find the single most popular street food in Lebanon – delicious variations of an authentic flatbread.

We are a home style bakery serving traditional Lebanese flatbreads – savory and sweet.  All baking is done fresh in our oven and most of our ingredients hail from Lebanon. Enjoy our fresh lemonades, café blanc (white coffee), fresh mint tea and delightful Lebanese coffee.

Our hope is to create a cozy environment where those who have never been to Lebanon leave our space with the goal of visiting, and for those who have been, to leave feeling like they just had a real taste of Beirut.

Established in 2013, Manousheh first opened its doors as a pop-up in Nolita.

Come find us in the Lower East Side (403 Grand Street, NY, NY 10002) or the Greenwich Village (193 Bleecker Street, NY, NY 10012).