BY ANNIE CAPPETTA | JANUARY 24, 2018
If you see a young woman measuring and staking vacant land in your neighborhood, passing out flyers and offering to pay you to work in a garden, it might be Asha Loring of Health in the Hood on her quest to bring fresh produce to South Florida food deserts.
Loring is founder and executive director of Health in the Hood, a nonprofit that installs community gardens in residential food deserts and offers health education programs. Loring, whose professional background is in nonprofit administration, mastered grant writing and worked in different communities before launching the South Florida organization.
Community gardens had long been a part of her upbringing. Her father, Dr. Marvin Dunn, a former professor and long-time organizer in Miami, installed community gardens as part of his organization, Roots in the City. Loring affectionately refers to Dunn as “the OG – original gardener.” Even her bat mitzvah community service project was in one of her dad’s gardens.
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