Revised Treatment - Kelly West

It’s early on Saturday morning, and a small group gathers outside a trailer home in south Austin. Armed with rakes and shovels, they pile into a van and drive across town to a house where a lush vegetable garden grows in the front yard. The motley crew of workers is careful with the harvest, which will pay their bills for the week.

The Karporphoreo program, started by Steven Hebbard through Mobile Loaves and Fishes, is a new project aimed at creating jobs for formerly homeless Austinites through organic gardening. By planting and harvesting organic produce from the residential yards of member families, participants in the program learn a job skill, and earn a wage from what they sell at the farmer’s market.

This 7-minute documentary video tells the story of one program participant, Lloyd Bell, and shows how the program is making a change in his eating habits and in his life. Bell has lived in Austin for over 40 years, and in fact used to deliver produce to the original Whole Foods store, before it became an international corporation. Bell will tell the story of how he ended up homeless, and how last year the Mobile Loaves and Fishes trailer program helped him get off the streets. We will see Bell working in the garden and selling produce at the farmer’s market to take home a paycheck, as part of MLF’s newest program. Using visuals of the plants and gardens, interviews with Hebbard, Bell, and other program participants, and verite scenes of Bell’s life, this video will profile both an individual and a movement that is attempting to find a solution to Texas’ poor record of eating healthy foods.

This film is geared toward the general public in Austin, many of whom may feel that they have heard enough about “eating local” and “sustainability”. By showing real examples of people in the community who are affected by these issues, we can explain that this is not something that only interests Whole Foods shoppers or people in high-income brackets. The story can eventually be branched out to other communities, because these issues, while severe in Texas, are prevalent nationwide.