Did you KNOW? You can search for words on a page. So for this assignment, go back to the article and search the words “was” and “were”.

How to find words: When you have opened the web page in your browser, simply press Ctrl+F keyboard combination to bring up the Find bar. On Microsoft Edge, you will see the following search bar appear. Once you have typed in your phrase, they will get highlighted on the web page if they are found.

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Instructions

Please read the article on Food Resources, and then REPLY to this post and answer with:

1. COPY one sentences from the article that has the past tense verb to be. (With section #) OR write your own sentence about the article using past tense to be (was/were).
   

   Article on Food Resources in Cleveland

   Rid-All shows us how to create a green oasis in a segregated city: Cleveland Champions

   Updated Dec 13, 2019; Posted Nov 28, 2019

   

   By Nina Lakhani | The GuardianThis story is part of The Plain Dealer’s Cleveland City Champions series, which honors people and organizations that have done bold, innovative work to lift up a neighborhood or a community. The series was produced in partnership with The Guardian and with public broadcaster Ideastream. To read about other Cleveland City Champions, go to tinyurl.com/CleChampions (Links to an external site.)

   1. CLEVELAND, Ohio — The psychedelic autumn foliage signals the end of the growing season across the Rust Belt states, as farmers wind down for the winter chill.
   2. Yet in Cleveland’s bleak ‘forgotten triangle,’ bountiful crops of rainbow chard, collard greens, and plump purple eggplant are blooming at one of the city’s trailblazing urban farms.
   4. In a segregated city impoverished by generations of institutionalized racism, food deserts and urban decay, now there is an arable green oasis. The farm, created by the non-profit Rid-All partnership (Links to an external site.), is striving to change eating habits in a city where health inequalities disproportionately blights African-American communities.
   6. Its environmentally cognizant African-American creators have transformed a desolate illegal dumping ground into a lush, eight-acre agricultural innovation site with greenhouses, fish ponds and a composting facility.
   8. Rid-All’s ethos is community building through education and experience: Over the past decade, hundreds of Clevelanders – mostly African-American men – have completed its urban farming training programs, including most recently a group of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Aided by volunteer sustainability evangelists, the farm has become a community hub, hosting vegetarian food festivals, weddings, cooking classes, school visits and guided tours.
   10. Damien Forshe, a co-founder of Rid-All in the Kinsman neighborhood, pictured in one of the six greenhouses in 2012, died Nov. 29, 2018, after a heart attack.Plain Dealer File
   11. “The idea was to show people how to turn vacant urban plots into green spaces that generate community pride and economic opportunities,” said co-founder Randy McShepard.
   13. “Diabetes, heart disease and obesity are killing us, yet these diseases can all be mitigated by healthy diets, which is what we’re trying to teach our communities.”
   15. The scale of the challenge in Cleveland, a former powerhouse which has suffered decades of economic decline and widespread racial inequalities, can be daunting:
   17. ● African-Americans make up 30% of the county’s population, but are 79% more likely to die from diabetes than their white counterparts.
   19. ● Almost 54% of children in Cleveland live in poverty – the second highest rate in the country after Detroit – but African-Americans and Latinos are three times more affected (Links to an external site.) than Whites.
   21. ● Countywide, one in three, or 400,000 people, live in a food desert – a neighborhood with high rates of poverty and no supermarket within half a mile. This dire situation is even worse in predominantly black areas like East Cleveland, Hough and Glenville, where more than half the people rely on gas stations, minimarts and fast food outlets to get food.
   22. Zen Adams, Sheena Diane, Shallanna Agbomanyi and Lori Middleton, administrators of Rid-All standing in front of greenhouses in October.
   24. School friends
   26. It’s within this context of deep-seated economic and racial injustice that Rid-All was founded in 2009 by three school friends who grew-up on the same street, in a suburb where African-Americans were only able to move after racist home-lending policies, known as red-lining, were relaxed in the 1960s.
   28. Rid-All began as the global financial crisis was taking hold of the city, fueling a rise in unemployment and foreclosures. They acquired 1.3 acres of abandoned land, obtained council permits, cleaned it up, and opened the first greenhouse in early 2010.
   30. “Food is the longest relationship you will ever have, and we’re trying to help people make it a good one,” said Keymah Durden III, another cofounder. (The third original founder, Damien Forste, died suddenly last year).
   31. But this is about more than healthy eating: the core team, all African-American men in their 50s, are socially minded entrepreneurs with their fingers in many green pies, striving to inspire and teach community members to grow small businesses. They were all members of Alpha Phi Alpha – the first African-American college fraternity, which emphasizes community service, leadership and tackling injustice. One recent urban farming graduate has launched an organic skincare line using herbs grown at the farm, another a hot sauce company.
   33. In the past decade, numerous urban farms have folded in Cleveland, but Rid-All is expanding and has spawned numerous not-for-profit and business spinoffs, including a commercial fish farm, vegan catering, puppet and theatre shows, comics, and beekeeping, with a vegetarian restaurant and juice business in the works. Durden added: “Rid-All is about creating environments and experiences which help transform our communities into healthier places. It’s about environmental stewardship, community building and training up leaders of the future.”
   35. Invest small, inspire big
   37. On a chilly grey October morning, Valerie Harrison, a retired teacher and community organizer, is out mowing the grass and inspecting the season’s final harvest at the Bedford Heights’ community garden.
   39. This was an unused grassy plot in 2010, which Harrison, 60, persuaded the mayor of Bedford Heights, a predominantly black mixed income suburb, to sanction as a community garden. Now, there are 20 raised plots where cub scouts, widows, and adults with learning difficulties grow a variety of crops including strawberries, tomatoes, kale, and okra; 10 percent of the produce is donated to the community centre and local residents.
   40. Harrison recently completed Rid-All’s five-month farming course on a scholarship, after promising to impart the knowledge to other gardeners. She’s already set-up a composting bin, and she’s secured funds to double the number of plots in time for next season, a joint venture with a local public middle school.
   42. “Kids with disabilities, the introverted ones who don’t like sports, or have behavioral problems, if I can tap into those children and encourage them to learn by touching and doing and eating what they grow, it will make a big difference,” Harrison told the Guardian.
   43. This is exactly the multiplier effect that Rid-All want to generate: invest small, inspire big.
   45. In one promising local scheme, the county health board has helped organize residents in food deserts to identify their priorities and create political pressure, in order to obtain hundreds of thousands of government dollars to support four new supermarkets.
   47. Still, not a single Cuyahoga County supermarket (a food store bigger than 10,000 ft) is owned by an African-American.
   49. * . * . *