Michigan State University faculty and students are producing a documentary on a vision of Flint, Mich., as a healthier, greener city. It will show the challenges of bringing fresh produce to a food desert, feeding schools, providing educational options and battling bureaucracy.

On Wednesdays through July, Great Lakes Echo will run a segment expected to become a building block of the finished story. You can help.

Post questions, suggest interviews, make comments or offer suggestions to help producers tell the story of a city trying to re-grow its roots literally and figuratively as a model for post-industrial revitalization. Links to all of the segments will end up on the Greening of Flint main page.

This week:

Each week in the summer, about 50 high school and college students feed the hens, tend the greenhouse and sift the new compost at Youth Karate-Ka: Harvesting Earth Farm in Beecher, a community outside of Flint. At the same time, farm owners Master Jacky and Dora King, black belts in karate, teach these young workers self-defense with rakes, hoes and shovels. For many of these young students, this is their first job. For the Kings, the farm sows the seeds of a sustainable agriculture that may save Flint.

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