Eagle Scout - Benjamin Matlick (2026)
"Be Prepared"
Urban Food Systems Index
P-Patch Harvest 2024
"One hundred years after Arthur Eldred of New York earned this nation’s first Eagle Scout Award, new, independent research demonstrates the significant, positive impact Eagle Scouts have on society every day. Since it was first awarded in 1912, more than 2 million young men have achieved Scouting America’s highest rank. The study conduct
"One hundred years after Arthur Eldred of New York earned this nation’s first Eagle Scout Award, new, independent research demonstrates the significant, positive impact Eagle Scouts have on society every day. Since it was first awarded in 1912, more than 2 million young men have achieved Scouting America’s highest rank. The study conducted by Baylor University, Merit Beyond the Badges, found that Eagle Scouts are more likely than men who have never been in Scouting to:
- Have higher levels of planning and preparation skills,
- be goal-oriented, and network with others
- Be in a leadership position at their place of employment or local community
- Report having closer relationships with family and friends
- Volunteer for religious and nonreligious organizations
- Donate money to charitable groups
- Work with others to improve their neighborhoods
This independent research was funded by the Templeton Foundation and conducted by Baylor University in 2010.
Scouting America has linked to it with the permission of Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, Program on Prosocial Behavior."
P-Patch Harvest 2024
Urban Food Systems Index
P-Patch Harvest 2024
"As food insecurity tightened its grip on Seattle communities in 2023, P-Patch Giving Gardens eased the pain by donating 33,438 pounds of fresh produce to food banks, despite an unusually hot and dry summer. Here’s a snapshot of how much organic and pesticide-free produce our resilient volunteers delivered to food banks last year:
- Barton
"As food insecurity tightened its grip on Seattle communities in 2023, P-Patch Giving Gardens eased the pain by donating 33,438 pounds of fresh produce to food banks, despite an unusually hot and dry summer. Here’s a snapshot of how much organic and pesticide-free produce our resilient volunteers delivered to food banks last year:
- Barton Street P-Patch – 1000 pounds
- Beacon Food Forest – 3540 pounds
- Belltown P-Patch – 343 pounds
- Bradner Gardens P-Patch – 1649 pounds
- Delridge P-Patch – 507 pounds
- Hillman City P-Patch – 558 pounds
- Magnuson Community Garden – 5357 pounds
- Picardo Farm P-Patch – 2922 pounds
Since 1973, Seattle’s P-Patch gardens have strengthened community relationships, encouraged civic engagement, and served as restorative gathering spaces throughout the city. Generosity is a consistent thread that runs through every P-Patch in Seattle. Community gardeners share their time, knowledge, and kindness with each other. While we know that every garden is a place where giving is an everyday part of the culture, some gardens have formalized their donation programs and track how much produce they share with the community each year. There are 90 P-Patches serving various neighborhoods in Seattle; and in 2023, 58 of them had a system for sharing produce. P-Patch gardeners volunteered their time starting seeds, tending garden beds, harvesting produce, and delivering food to ensure that fewer people worried about where they would find their next meal. And Seattle’s Giving Garden Network helped make that generosity possible by providing free seeds and starts to gardeners."
Urban Food Systems Index
Urban Food Systems Index
Urban Food Systems Index
When it came time to plan my Eagle Scout project, after over a decade in Scouts, I knew I wanted it to involve urban gardening.
I contacted Mark Huston, President of the Board of the Magnuson P-Patch, and asked if I could focus on the P-Patch and Community Giving Gardens in my Eagle Scout project.
I decided to build two raised planter beds
When it came time to plan my Eagle Scout project, after over a decade in Scouts, I knew I wanted it to involve urban gardening.
I contacted Mark Huston, President of the Board of the Magnuson P-Patch, and asked if I could focus on the P-Patch and Community Giving Gardens in my Eagle Scout project.
I decided to build two raised planter beds that would be used to grow food donated to local food banks and shelters. I also planned two benches for the gardeners.
I recruited 10 team members to help me execute this project and met with the committee to make sure my plans were in alignment with their goals for the improvements. The beds we created are responsible for over 200 extra pounds of produce donated yearly to the area food banks and provide 20 more square feet of gardening space to local volunteers.
Magnusun Park Team
Seattle's Food Action Plan (2023-present)
Seattle's Food Action Plan (quoted from the linked .gov site)
2023
UFS represented SPR on City of Seattle (COS) interdepartmental team Food Action Plan 2.0.
2024
UFS worked with the Office of Sustainability (OSE) and Department of Neighborhoods (DON) to create the proposal for the COS Urban Farm & Food Equity Project Participatory Budget funding process.
Goals and Core Activities
Local food systems involve all the steps in a network of growing, consuming, and disposing of food. From the seeds, land, and farmers to the processing facilities, markets, kitchens, and urban compost piles—all the people, services, and materials are a part of the complex and interconnected food system. The goals below speak to how UFS will use culturally relevant program tools to maximize the production of available gardens and orchards for the distribution and consumption of healthy, fresh food in communities citywide:
- Improve the physical and emotional health of residents.
- Provide access to economic and public land management opportunities.
- Increase production of nutritional food that can be harvested and distributed by and to residents, specifically those
who are food insecure or have less access to fresh food.
- Develop an environmental workforce training, food-production curriculum, and agricultural business model to
support residents.
- Create meaningful and respectful relationships between SPR and marginalized Seattle communities.
- Expand food production to more medium to large-scale urban gardens and orchards.
- Activate culturally relevant programs using urban food systems as an equitable municipal food systems model integrated with a diversity, justice, equity, and inclusion framework.
Urban Food Systems plans to direct resources to five core activities, listed briefly below and described in more detail in the subsequent sections. These core activities were chosen as high-priority steps to take to strengthen the foundation of the UFS program so that it can expand and grow sustainably with integrity to its purpose and guiding principles:
Garden Establishment & Site Activation:
Develop processes and best practices for establishing new gardens at sites and activating those sites through programming and community engagement.
Site Assessment and Accessibility:
Conduct an inventory of all the gardens and orchards under UFS purview, including their condition, current productivity and harvest levels, and needs for improved management.
Partnership Opportunities:
Create a new process to facilitate partnership opportunities between volunteers and community-based organizations interested in becoming UFS Community Stewards for utilizing, maintaining, and harvesting UFS sites.
Food Productivity & Distribution:
Increase the productivity of UFS sites, amount of harvested fruit, and distribution to communities, especially to those experiencing higher rates of food insecurity.
Community Programming & Engagement:
Implement a series of culturally relevant programs to inform the City on effective ways to engage with BIPOC communities about food access. Urban agriculture resources grounded in equity principles will be developed with partners and shared with the public.
Purpose:
The Urban Food Systems program provides Seattle residents equitable access to local nutritional food through the stewardship of community-based organizations to manage community gardens and public orchards. UFS sites are located on Seattle Parks and Recreation property and are open to the public for gleaning. Community-based organizations selected to become a UFS Community Partner are supplied the following resources from SPR:
- Sustainable systems to produce, harvest, and maintain food production services.
- Free access to communal public land not allotted to an individual.
- Support for programming at designated UFS site locations.
UFS sites are dedicated to producing food that reflects the culture of its community partners and focuses on the need for representation from communities of color in the food itself. UFS actively recruits Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) organizations and volunteers to help maintain public food production spaces, grow food that is culturally reflective of their communities, and distribute those foods to their community members.
Mission and Values
Urban Food Systems is committed to Equity, Food Sovereignty, and Social Justice to provide equitable food access to Seattle community members. Guided by the policy and recommendations of several City of Seattle initiatives, UFS actively works to dismantle barriers to food access, ultimately fostering a more just and sustainable food system:
Equity and Environment Initiative (2015 - Present)
Launched in 2015, Seattle's Equity & Environment Initiative (EEI) is a partnership between the City of Seattle and the community to deepen Seattle's commitment to race and social justice in environmental work. While Seattle has long been recognized as an environmental leader, we face many challenges as the broader U.S. environmental movement: those who shape and benefit from environmental policies and outcomes are primarily white, upper-income communities. Those who do not benefit from progressive policies are overburdened with health, social, and economic impacts, and the EEI seeks to reverse those outcomes.
Food Action Plan (2024)
In 2024, the City of Seattle released the updated Food Action Plan as a roadmap for an equitable, sustainable, and resilient local food system supporting healthy, vibrant communities. The Plan outlines action the City of Seattle can take to support our local food system while addressing interrelated topics, including racial and social justice, food security and health, economic development, and environmental sustainability.
Participatory Budgeting (2024)
Mayor Bruce Harrell signed the City's 2025-2026 biennial budget to allocate funding for the Urban Farming & Food Equity project awarded through the Office of Civil Rights 2024 Participatory Budgeting process. The project includes activating publicly owned green spaces for new community-led urban agricultural sites, funding for physical site improvements, compensation for community-based organizations that maintain the sites, and training programs that build capacity for small-scale farmers & food producers.