Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 3, No. 49 - December 9, 2021
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This Issue
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Professionals.......................8
Classifieds............................2
Entertainment......................2
Hawthorne............................3
Lawndale..............................4
Inglewood.............................5
Legals................................ 6-7
Travel...................................2,4
Pets........................................8
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The Joy of Giving in the South Bay
The City of Hawthorne’s City Clerk’s office held a produce and toy giveaway at City Hall last week. Families were offered a choice of a toy for each child and two bags of produce. Families even took Polaroid
photos with a holiday backdrop. The “produce only” giveaway will continue every other Saturday from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm outside of City Hall. Photo courtesy of City of Hawthorne.
Local Backyard Grower Shares
Produce with Neighbors
By Kiersten Vannest
“We basically live in an agricultural wonderland,
Ryan Xavier Miller, creator of Galora, posing with Sunny, the mascot.
and most of that food is just ignored and
spoiled.” Here in El Segundo, yards across the
city are adorned with fruit trees, berry bushes,
and produce-producing wildlife. Much of that
produce often goes to waste, as neighbors
continue to buy shipped items from a chain
store. Ryan Xavier Miller wants to change that.
After taking a hard hit to his successful
travel and tourism business during the pandemic,
Miller looked inward and upward for
a new idea. In a time when the world was
squirreled away, and some were experiencing
food insecurity, Miller saw an opportunity to
help. With his idea in mind and his heart in
the project, Miller dreamed up his current
project, Galora. Galora is an app, a website,
and a community. Users can list their local
items, such as fruit, vegetables, eggs, freshly
baked bread, even sometimes waste products
for fertilizers (for which there are endearing
terms like “bunny honey,” which means rabbit
poop). Then, another user can see a general
area near them where their desired product
might be. From there, exchanges are entirely
user-based. Two parties often exchange trades
for goods or payment in the absence of a trade.
It’s this user part that Miller is most excited
about. “The beauty of it is that all we
have created is the platform for people to be
themselves,” he says, “and when that happens,
people end up really surprising you and I
think surprising each other with the generosity,
creativity, and open-mindedness that people
inherently have.”
Miller recounts several stories of humanness
in this created community that stayed with
him. One member was fighting through cancer
during Covid times, and so she was unable to
go out and meet new people or shop in most
grocery stores for risk of infection. Users on
the app drove to her so she wouldn’t have to
leave and left her free bags of produce from
their backyards on her doorstep.
Another member, a nurse in Glendale, turned
her backyard into a tropical jungle with papayas,
bananas, moorings, goji berries, mulberries,
grapefruits, figs, passionfruit, and many more
greens and herbs. She decided to stick with
the site when she sold some passionfruit to
a young chef, who brought her back some
passionfruit crème brûlée.
From a group of women-led urban foragers
and a yard in Malibu with ten ducks and
chickens to a FedEx airplane mechanic who
took over his driveway and sidewalk with
growing goods and a disabled music teacher
who offers lessons for fruit and veggies, the
site has a place for everyone. Outside of local
trading, members have found friendships and
an opportunity to socialize.
After seeing a need and observing a growing
interest in local products, Miller met his business
partner and co-founder, Chris Chin. Though
Miller is a serial entrepreneur, he had not yet
tackled an app or the world of technology in
his business ventures. Chin, having worked
at Amazon and owning an app development
company, partnered with Miller to create the
website and app from top to bottom.
Miller believes that El Segundo is a perfect
candidate for an organization like Galora. With
its small-town feel and friendly neighbors, food
sharing is already a deeply ingrained tenant
of the close-knit community. An involved
member in all local wellness groups, he hopes
that with his idea, the sharing process will be
able to reach everyone and make the practice
more accessible.
Miller also discusses the issue of food insecurity
and food justice. He cites areas of Los
the community connect with each other, he
hopes to make fresh food more available and
less likely to have preservatives often added
to produce to help it survive long drives and
journeys.
The benefits of buying local extend beyond
preservatives and into richer nutrients and more
flexibility in options. For example, a user with
chickens who sells fresh eggs got a message
about an interested buyer; only the buyer was
allergic to soy. Though even the best chicken
feeds contain soy, the owner was able to adjust
the diet of their animals to accommodate so
that the eggs could be enjoyed by all. In a
similar story, a custom-made cake was made
for a user who couldn’t eat store-bought cakes.
Recently, Miller added a new mascot to his
creation. Designed by a digital animator/artist
member and crocheted by another member
who sells her creations on the app, Sunny is
shared between members as they trade goods.
Members are encouraged to take pictures of
Sunny with the products being traded, so that
users can see how far Sunny goes and how
Angeles that have less money flowing through
them, which makes larger grocery stores less
likely to open a location. This means that
some communities have to travel miles for
groceries, sometimes without a car, making
fresh food nearly inaccessible. By helping See Ryan Miller, page 8
Friday
Mostly
Sunny
63˚/46˚
Saturday
Sunny
62˚/47˚
Sunday
Mostly
Sunny
59˚/50˚