January 28, 2013

The Quinnite Nation was represented well in Little Rock, Arkansas when a group presented at the Southern Sustainability Agricultural Working Group 2013 Conference the weekend of January 25. Elizabeth Wattley, Director of Servant Leadership, Andrea Bithell, Manager of the WE Over Me Farm, and students Kendrick Jackson and Shon Griggs presented to the group. Simply entitled "Growing Food on Campus", the presentation gave conference attendees insight to how the nationally acclaimed urban garden plays into Paul Quinn College's servant leadership and entrepreneurship model.

The project started in 2010 when Michael Sorrell, the President of Paul Quinn, recognized the lack of available healthy food in the Highland Hills neighborhood of Dallas. In an effort to address the College's surrounding "food desert", President Sorrell called for Paul Quinn's abandoned football field to be turned into an urban garden. Since its creation, the WE Over Me Farm has more than 4,500 pounds of food. A social entrepreneurial effort, food from the farm is sold to people of the community as well as Dallas-area chefs, it is used in the College's dining hall, and ten percent of it is donated to the community. The WE Over Me Farm has been covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Observer in addition to other local and national media outlets.