Illene Pevec
Director
Fat City Farmers Program

Fat City Farmers Program Director

achildsgardenofpeace@gmail.com

Be sure to check outIllène Pevec's new book:

Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health and Joy,New Village Press,2016

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After graduating with adoctorate in Design and Planning from the University of ColoradoƵ,Illène became a Research Affiliate of the Children Youth and Environments Center housed in the Program of Environmental Design. The CYE Center merged into CEDaR to help develop sustainable and healthy environments for children and youth everywhere.Illène is currently working with aninternational team of community development and health professionals and researchers in the mountains of Peru helping to develop community gardens in barren eviornments.

Work in Puebla, Mexico

Between 2013 - 2014Illène worked with youth volunteers from multiple countries to develop a garden to be used as an education environment for students.Illène recently returned to Puebla for teacher trainings.

Current Research in Pachacamac, Peru as told by Illène

TheWawa Illariresearch project in Pachacamac, Peru is a mixed methods intervention accompanied by research. The purpose is to support early childhood development for babies ages birth to age 4 and measure the impact of multiple interventions.Parents will receive training in the International Child Development Project (ICDP) methodology for empathic care giving and classes in “Comida Consciente” an approach developed by our team member, medical doctor Mariana Garzon. Myresponsibility lies in developing community and home gardens for the 150 families in the study. My research examines the impact of community and home gardens on a family’s access to healthy food. I will be helping the families to plant their gardens with supplies and instruction.
Each garden will include a fruit tree or vining fruit with other fruit trees planted in community spaces and accessible to all community members. We will photograph the gardens at home and in the community gardens at planting, then one and two year’s later and include each family in their garden photo to measure how much food is grown at each year mark. The climate allows for year round growing. We will count the plants that are alive at the one-year mark and two-year mark. This project focuses on the child's health, but also includes measuring the garden that has to be maintained by the parents as one marker of access to healthy food. lFunding for this project comes from Grand Challenges Canada Saving Brains program with additional support for the gardens from the Lewis Family Foundation.