Category: Community Action

Categories
Community Action

How Does Our Garden Grow?

EMU garden fundraiser

We need to raise $15,000 to make this garden project grow! Can you help?

Donate Here

Even if you aren’t able to help with a monetary donation, sharing our graphics and fundraiser with your neighbors, is very helpful.

Bonus: Your donations are tax-deductible as they funnel through Garden City Harvest (an official 501c3).

Garden City Harvest is building a new community garden, located at Missoula County’s East Missoula Lion’s Park.

Here are details on the East Missoula Community Garden.

In spite of the visible progress, the East Missoula Community Garden isn’t complete. To make this garden grow, we need your help to secure the final bits of funding for this project. 

Why Help?

There are countless reasons why East Missoula United (EMU) feels this garden will benefit our community. The community work days that have already taken place prove that this garden will unite our neighbors and encourage them to work together to build and better our park.

44 plots will be ready for planting this spring (2025). Have you applied for a plot yet? Apply for one here!

Investing in a community garden is a fantastic project for many reasons, especially in our small community which is often overlooked. 

EMU feels this garden will provide community members access to fresh fruits and vegetables. East Missoula is one of the small communities that is considered a food desert, this garden helps to alleviate that challenge. By growing food locally, our community garden can provide fresh produce to our neighbors in need. Gardens help to alleviate hunger in many food-insecure areas. 

This garden already provides educational opportunities, environmental benefits, and beautifies a space that wasn’t being used for anything. The grass was being watered, why not grow some food and flowers instead? A garden is much more beneficial to our neighbors and our pollinators. 

Enjoy our gallery of progress!

A pipe dream
Raised beds are in with sand paths
The 20 year ago – EM Garden
44 plots!
The shed built by Habitat for Humanity
So many wonderful neighbors
The Vision
Volunteers
Progress is Satisfying
Before
Raised Beds
After
Categories
Community Action Community Events

The Holiday Season

Cheers to another year of East Missoula United and all of your amazing support!

2021 Holiday Gathering and Tree Lighting

We found a generous tree company to assist us with our holiday decor at the East Missoula Lion’s Park this year.

Headwaters Tree Care will be climbing the crooked tree at the park and revisiting each strand of lights. They will hang fresh lights (where needed) with care.

We’d love to compensate this generous company for their time, AND we will need to replace at least 1/2 of the lights that are hanging up the tree now. Please keep them in mind for your tree care needs.

We’re accepting light donations again. *Please Spread the Word!* It would be very helpful if you could check to be sure your lights work before you swing them by. Of course, new lights are very welcome as well. Financial donations will also be accepted to help pay Headwaters and/or buy more lights, if we aren’t able to get enough donations.

Sidenote: If all financial donations aren’t used, we’ll use them for our next postcard mailing. We promise your donation will go toward doing good for our community.

Here is a reminder of the delight the tree brought last year.

Finally, we welcome you to join us on the Winter Solstice, December 21st for a tree lighting and gathering at the Lion’s Park. Time of the event is TBD.

Light donations can be left at Lady J’s Barber Shop (she has a new location) at 3720 Hwy 200, Missoula, MT 59802. Barbershop hours are 10-5 Tuesday-Friday and by appointment on Saturday. Maybe you’ll need a fresh new cut while you’re there?

The light decorating will take place next week sometime, so the sooner you are able to drop donations or make a financial contribution, the better. We didn’t give ourselves a very big window to collect this year.

Financial donations can be made here. Feel free to leave a note in the comments if you’d like us to recognize your donation on our social media and website. All donations between now and December 21st will be used to light our community tree, and possibly bring warm drinks and snacks to our gathering on 12/21.

Click here to help light our magical tree!

Psst: We heard a rumor Santa and Mrs. Claus might be there again!

Please let us know if you’d like to help in any way with our event or decorating process. We have a lot of opportunity if you like spreading holiday cheer!

Thank you and Happy Holidays!

Categories
Community Action

Shoveling Need

Call to Action!

Hey East Missoula Friends/Neighbors,

We need your help. Do you like shoveling? Do you have a snowplow and love putting it to use?

We have a friend in our neighborhood, with a disability, who would like to be able to reach out to our community to get their property shoveled when/if we have a snowstorm. We probably have many other neighbors with this need as well.

This request has prompted us to form a new list of people to call upon when the need arises. If you’d like to be on this snow-removal list please send us a message or give us a call at 406-686-2288. We’ll need your phone number too, in case we need to contact you quickly, in emergency situations.

Thank you! We appreciate you! If you’d like to be removed from the list at a later date, you can simply notify us the same way.

Categories
Community Action Community Events

Earth Day Clean-Up

We’ve got a plan in the works. If you’d like to be a part of the committee we’d love to have you join our meetings. We’re cleaning up our neighborhoods on the weekend of April 24-25, in lieu of Earth Day.

Earth Day Clean Up East Missoula United

We’ll have a dumpster available (in the Burnich parking lot), as well as some recycling options. If you are able to help with the logistics of these things please holler. The main thing we need is for you to spread the word! We would love to have the neighborhood bustling with people pitching in. Can you mark your calendar? Would you share these dates with your neighbor(s)? We would be so grateful.

Our friends at Hellgate Canyon Storage have graciously offered to sponsor this event. If you have interest in being a sponsor too, please let us know. We are looking for all of the support we can get.

Please contact us with any questions and/or if you’d like to be part of the planning committee. We would love your input and assistance. We will have a few Zoom meetings leading up to the event – you are welcome to join them. Message us for a link.

Categories
Community Action

No More Storage Units

You might remember the first project we worked on in October of 2020. The County Commissioners met to make a decision on some new zoning in the Ole’s parking lot. Ole’s is right in the center of our small community. There are residents facing that lot and we already have too many storage units out here. Our community didn’t want more.

We took action spreading the word throughout our community to stop this zoning from being passed. A petition was created, a FB page for an extra element of communication and our core group of action takers formed.

East Missoulians united and were able to collaborate with the masses in our community and have a profound impact at the Commissioners’ meeting. The commissioners decided to deny the zoning request. We had a win in the midst of a pandemic and election season where things were feeling bleak.

We have big dreams for our community and uniting everyone. We’re doing it as East Missoula United. Join us!