Our purpose is to create a food forest, community gathering space in Portland's East Bayside neighborhood. Our permaculture-designed edible landscape of fruit trees, berry bushes and medicinal herbs will help connect us to nature. Fox Forest Friends is a volunteer group with the goal of promoting ecosystem stewardship, youth involvement and community engagement. Our diverse neighborhood includes private residences, renters, public housing and industrial businesses. One of our primary goals is to engage the community.  We want to create a safe centrally located green urban space in East Bayside that welcomes everybody. The mature trees, berry bushes, medicinal herbs and solar powered water feature will support pollinators. The food forest depends on pollinators and we will work to nuture and protect them. FFFF is located on an EPA brownfield that permaculture practices will help repair and detoxify. We emphasize composting, organic practices and sustainable harvesting so that plants can achieve their full life cycle as we practice ecosystem stewardship. We also hope to expand our understanding and awareness of East Bayside's rich cultural diversity through this project. Although we live closely together sometimes our paths do not cross. Barriers of language and cultural differences exist. Our focus at FFFF includes community outreach meetings and gatherings at the food forest where we will include interpreter services to engage all members of our neighborhood. We truly believe that the plants we grow in the food forest will help us grow together as a community.