Urban Farming Initiative
Our Urban Farming Initiative is a multifaceted project centered around transforming an abandoned, overgrown baseball field into gardens that produce fruit, vegetables, and herbs, to be sold at a Farmers Market to low-income neighbors who lack access to fresh, affordable produce. Urban teenagers will play significant roles in the initiative.
Outcomes include transforming our neighborhood’s large plots of vacant, overgrown land into productive, beautiful gardens, making the neighborhood a more pleasant place to live, making neighbors more hopeful for their community’s future, and granting neighbors access to affordable, fresh produce through the market and six giveaway gardens. Through their work designing and operating the gardens and market, teenagers in our Youth Development program will learn concepts valuable in running a small business. Through hands-on use of the gardens as educational tools, an additional 225 neighborhood young people in grades K-5 and 6-8 will learn basic ecological concepts, principles of nutrition and healthy eating, and skills in environmental stewardship.