Growing Gardens uses the experience of growing food in schools, backyards and correctional facilities to cultivate healthy and equitable communities. In our three core programs, we build family health and food security through gardening education, support, and celebration.
Our Home Gardens programming helps to increase health and wellbeing among our participants, decrease food insecurity, and improve access to culturally-appropriate fruits and vegetables. Our approach emphasizes investing in neighborhood gardening infrastructure and education to build a healthy local food system that is responsive to the needs and health of the community.
In Youth Grow, we engage kids from pre-kindergarten through high school in food and gardening activities, giving them new perspectives on food, health, and the world around them. Through hands-on lessons about agriculture, nutrition, ecosystems, and cultural food traditions, we help youth feel accepted and empowered to make conscious choices, become stewards of the environment, share their culture and increase community resilience.
In Lettuce Grow, we offer horticulture education in 14 correctional facilities, providing incarcerated adults with agency, dignity, and workforce development in greenhouse management, sustainable gardening, and horticultural fields. This program puts incarcerated individuals on a pathway to post-release work and successful reintegration into their communities, while promoting the use of sustainable agricultural methods which have a significant impact on the local environment.
We are so grateful for the multi-year funding that BFF provides. Multi-year general operating grants allow us to plan ahead, have confidence to hire new team members, and support our core work and our amazing team. We respect BFF’s strategy as a local funder with a robust funding structure that fosters relationship and incrementally engages organizations in deeper partnership over time. This structure indicates a genuine desire to commit to long-term partnership, and it is only this kind of commitment that can guarantee genuine progress in improving the issues specific to our region.
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