June 5 was World Environment Day, and the Xtiva team celebrated at the Milky Way Community Garden. We enjoyed meeting the Greenest City team, learning about their programs, and touring the garden.

Milky Way Garden provides an outdoor learning program for adult ESL learners in Parkdale. The garden is a source of healthy, fresh food for students and their families. It enables them to spend time outside while learning, grow traditional foods from their home cultures, and build connections with the surrounding community.

The garden was first established on an unused lot of land in 2007. In 2017, the land was purchased by Greenest City, a nonprofit that seeks to build healthy, inclusive neighborhoods through environmental stewardship. Greenest City worked with the Parkdale neighborhood and surrounding communities to create a vision for the space that continues its current garden and adds more experiential programming. In the future, Milky Way Garden will grow to be a community anchor, providing events and activities that support healthy food and cultural sharing for the neighborhood.

This June, Xtiva is proud to support Greenest City not only with our volunteer day but also with our monthly donation for our Social Good Awards. Every month, we choose a community nonprofit to support with a donation. We usually announce winners on the last day of the month, but this month, to honor World Environment Day, we’re announcing our winner early. Greenest City will be using our donation to support their many initiatives for Toronto youth, adults, and families.

In addition to maintaining community gardens like Milky Way, Greenest City organizes The Good Food Market, a farmers’ market with affordable prices for low-income people. They also run a citywide composting network, a co-op that provides work experience for people with employment barriers, several educational children’s gardens, and youth summer employment programs.

Xtiva is happy to support Greenest City this month, and we invite you to nominate your favorite nonprofit for our July Social Good Awards.