Little Creek Kung Fu

Building on Burch Street:

Our Mission in the City of Petersburg, Va. is to build an inspiring family and an uplifting community by promoting holistic health and wellness through exercise, meditation, marital arts, and nutrition. Following The Dao, we strive to take little and give much.

     This grant funding will be used to bring utilities and other modern convenience to the current landscape; a dedicated kitchen, space for clothes sorting and storage, water, electric, and all the things we need to help us care for the local wildlife and to help support our broader community service projects aimed at alleviating human suffering in Petersburg, Va.

     We currently occupy vacant lots between 117 & 105 N. Burch St. where we have built a community garden, wilderness walking trails, picnic areas, and we are working to preserve natural green space in the city while slowly cultivating a Native, Free Food Forest.

     We are an exclusively volunteer run organization; there are no hourly wages nor salaries available. We have spent a running total of 185 hours on trash removal alone and we have removed 3,234 gallons of trash as part of the neighborhood beautification and environmental rehabilitation associated with this project.

     The subconscious, psychological stress of living next to a heavily littered, abandoned, blighted property is being exchanged for the relief of seeing a beautiful, useable, healthy, meaningful, and purposeful space. Reducing neighborhood blight is beneficial to the city as a whole as well as to the local community; when neighbors see the area is cared for, the level of love, respect, and pride in in one's living situation is dramatically improved.

     The health of the ecology is our local and global health. Trash degrading on our land and neighboring properties slowly blows around the rest of the city, harming native flora and fauna, falling into water ways and flowing into the Appomattox, the Chesapeake, and soon after its floating in the ocean. Cleaning up is a worthy and necessary project for the whole world.

     Preserving green space in the city encourages healthy use of outdoor recreation where people can feel safe and secure being in a clean and well-maintained environment. This further fosters respect and appreciation of nature and improves one's understanding of humanity's role in supporting nature. 

     This project needs water, sewer, trash pickup, and better facilities for volunteers and patrons. This funding would give us our access to dedicated office space, access to public utilities, room to build a kitchen capable of serving the community and room to house those experiencing a temporary homelessness crisis.

     Annually, we work on holiday meals and redistributing winter clothing, in 2020 we served 480 large, fresh, hot holiday meals between Christmas and Thanksgiving Day and distributed an estimated $5,500+ in winter clothing. In 2021 we served another 480 hot, holiday meals, equally as large and fresh while redistributing 6,927 winter clothing items such as coats, hats, gloves, socks, umbrellas, and more for all ages and sizes (including New Year’s Day 2022). On New Year's Day 2022 we produced and gave away another 100 fresh, hot meals served directly to sheltered homeless living in hotels, motels, and other long-term stay facilities. 

     While we do not require proof of residence, we distribute exclusively within The City of Petersburg, Va. and only offer support to the present individuals.

     It is well documented that Petersburg, Va. is a food desert, with much of its population not only lacking access to healthy options but also lacking in education about healthy nutrition. This is a knowingly impoverished, underserved, and minority population. We are growing a totally free, open, public space that will naturally provide food. This will serve as a resource and a kick starter for education, encouraging healthy eating, bolstering outdoor recreation, fresh local fruit and vegetable production, and fostering native plants and animals. We are working very hard to plant only native or non-invasive species and we are removing as much of the invasive biomass and human produced litter as possible.

     Our highest hope is that we can enable our neighbors to make healthy decisions about their diet and exercise by providing an open access, local resource.

Links for Media, Journalism, & More:

Self Produced YouTube Video Christmas & New Year's Days 2021-2022

Self Produced YouTube Video Thanksgiving Day 2021

PI Article about Local Food Insecurity & Our Project 2022

WTVR Video Segment about Our Organization & Community Service 2022

PI Article about our 2021 Coat Drive 

PI Article Following Our First Real Estate Purchase

PI Article about Fitness & Recreational Equipment Giveaway Spring 2021

PI Article about Fitness Giveaway Follow-up

WTVR Christmas Meals and Winter Coat Giveaway 2020

PI Article about Thanksgiving Meals and Winter Coat Giveaway 2022