Overview
In the above TedTalk, Josh Trautwein and Daniel Clarke share their journey to their foundation of FreshTruck, a non-profit organization that aims to make healthy foods more accessible to the people in Boston that need it most (1). Their story exemplifies the procedures grassroots organizers across the country take today, such as identifying their communities needs, collaborating with experts to organization model, and seeking volunteers with aligned missions to help put the organizer’s plan into action.
The reason why Trautwein and Clarke became involved in organizing within their community matches that of other organizers driven to combat food insecurity. The men noticed a pattern in Boston’s lowest-income cities, the unavoidable challenge to access local and healthy foods at a feasible price. Therefore, FreshTruck, and many other grassroots like it, was inspired by the frustration with the food desert conditions within their community. Organizations like Green City Market and Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project.
Fresh Truck’s utilization of a produce-stocked school bus to allocate healthy options in a food desert, while proven effective, is unalike other grassroots with aligning missions. The majority of these organizations rely on urban farming to promote healthy living and improve food accessibility. Organizations, such as Fresh Truck, Rooftop Roots, and the Michigan Farming Initiative (to name a few) build gardens in their communities so that fresh food is available in the most deprived neighborhoods. These organizations aim to allocate healthy foods to community members at a reasonable cost, making healthy living an option for low-income families. Many urban farms, like those of the Michigan Farming Initiative and Green City Market, distribute their produce to local restaurants and grocers to increase the availability of healthy options beyond the farm.
The biggest challenge that these organizations face, located in urban areas, is finding the space to hold these gardens. Furthermore, these spaces must have access to sunlight and soil in order to produce the fresh fruits and vegetables that their communities need. To overcome this, many organizations like Michigan Farming Initiative, Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project, and Oregon Sustainable Agricultural Land Trust have redeveloped underutilized buildings and lots and used the space to build their urban gardens. Many organizations perceive rooftops of buildings to be perfect locations for these farms because they do not require much renovation and offer unlimited sunlight.
These grassroots organizations exist to serve the individuals and families within their communities in most need of a healthy lifestyle change. However, many forward-looking organizers identify youth in food deserts as their top priority, so that they can soon make effective leaders in their community one day. To organizations such as CitySprouts, The Cooking Room, Urbanstead, and the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, connecting children to urban farming is the way to do this. Many organizations have established classrooms and programs to teach children how to grow their own fruits and vegetables, how to make healthy choices, and why these choices are crucial to their ability to learn and grow. Parents play a crucial role when it comes to improving the diet of children. Therefore, these grassroots organizations typically extend to adults as well, teaching them about healthy diets and where to find fresh produce in their neighborhoods.
The organizations below are examples of effective grassroots efforts because they all were organized by people within the community with the understanding of what exactly it’s residents need to improve their health. These needs can vary from city to city. For example, Plant It Forward Farms is an organization specific to its refugee population and one that would not be as successful if their demographic was not taken into account.
Finally, the work of these grassroots organizations, whether it be directly or indirectly, impact the achievement of their communities’ children in schools. Not only do many of these organizations understand the impact of a student’s health on their ability to learn, but also the power that hands-on learning can have as well. In this way, it is conceivable that the urban garden grassroots movement is one that is only at its beginning.
Examples of Grassroots Organizations
Rooftop Roots, founded in 2011, adresses social, environment, and economic injustices in Washington DC‘s communities. By way of their garden design, installation, and maintenance services, Rooftop Roots supplies its surrounding communities with job opportunities and access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Above all, the organization continues to provide the service that originally inspired its establishment: education of how to grow food and plants in any environment. Rooftop Roots credits their versatile gardening curriculum to their ability to serve various ages and interests, including schools, businesses, and fellow community organizations. By making gardening more convenient and engaging, the organization hopes to progress overall interest in personal health and demonstrate the link between economic, social, and environmental justices.
The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) is a 100% volunteer-run non-profit organization that utilizes urban farming to address the social challenges of Detroit’s North End community. Since 2011, the organization’s urban farm has grown over 50,000 lbs of produce, providing fresh and healthy foods to local households, markets, restaurants and food pantries. Today, MUFI’s efforts also focus on a more recent project: the revamping of a two-square-block area into a structure a community resource center, which will ultimately promote sustainability and urban renewal. While many urban farming grassroots dedicate much of their focus to educating youth on how to make healthy choices, MUFI more fixates on economically efficient and environmentally viable community.
Fed up one morning with the scarcity healthy food options in the western stretch of Manhattan, over sixty volunteers gather at the underutilized Metro Baptist Church to transform it’s rooftop into what today is called, Hell’s Kitchen Farm Project. Today, Hell’s Kitchen increase food security in western Manhattan by distributing the rooftop farm’s fresh produce to local food pantries, teaching health and gardening to students of a local after school program, and organizing a Community Supported Agriculture program that serves households to local farmers.
CitySprouts was founded in 2001 by parents, teacher, and school principal of Cambridge, Massachusetts seeking opportunities for their children to explore the natural environment and food system around them. They envisioned the potential school garden’s ability to teach student’s about healthy food choices and provide the type of hands-on learning capable of engage students and indirectly improve their reading, writing, science, and math skills. Thus, these community members established a school garden program in two Cambridge schools, which quickly developed into the organization that CitySprouts is today. Currently. CitySprouts serves every public school in Cambridge, as well as many Boston public schools too. CitySprouts’ more recent creation of a teacher forum and a year-round after school program focused on engineering and food growth exhibit the organizations continual innovation in order to further serve their community.
Initiated by several parents of New York City’s PS3 school, The Cooking Room is a cutting-edge elementary school program that utilizes a dedicated kitchen classroom to offer food lessons to the children of PS3. What makes this The Cooking Room unique is the community’s effort to integrate the program’s curriculum into that of PS3. While grassroots organizations for urban farming typically teach youth how to grow fresh produce, this program’s sixteen lessons educates students on how exactly to cook with fresh ingredients and prepare healthy meals for themselves and their families. The Cooking Room believes that this type of education is essential for combating childhood obesity in their city. By becoming familiar with fresh ingredients and healthy recipes, PS3 students will be more able to make healthy choices within and outside school walls.
Since 1998, The Los Angeles Community Garden Council (LACGC) has increased access to healthy foods in LA county via the creation and maintenance of community gardens where neighborhoods are welcome to grow fresh produce. Many of these community farms are urban farms that deliver their fresh grown vegetables to local farmers markets and people in need. Like other grassroots, LACGC prides itself on their educational gardens that teach gardening, nutrition, and cooking to foster healthy lives in county. One of their key projects include the creation of a garden achievement center in East Hollywood, which will house a public park, community garden, and classroom.
Urbanstead is a nonprofit organization that aims to foster bright futures for Philadelphia neighborhoods by empowering their youth. This organization believes urban farming to be the avenue for this type of change, for the hands-on experience at urban farms provides opportunity to practice leadership skills and develop their careers. However, because bright futures require healthy minds and bodies, Urbanstead also values the lessons to be learned about healthy eating in these farms. Three of the organization’s programs engage Philadelphia’s youth in these practices. Today, Urbanstead continues to work with teachers of local schools and encourage the use of urban farms as outdoor classrooms. From this should come programs that directly impact students as they configure their futures in school.
Inspired by sustainable farmers’ markets in Europe, Chicago resident, Abby Mandel established the city’s first ever year-round farmers’ market, known today as Green City Market. This non-profit organization strives to allocate, advocate for, and teach about sustainably-grown produce. The Green City Market is proud to be the only farmers’ market in Chicago to supply fresh fruits and vegetables to its community members. They also distribute food to local restaurants and schools. Green City Market operates eight community programs, each with its unique aim. For example, “Savor the Seasons” presents fruits or vegetables when they are most ripe, providing a hands-on lesson on how to take advantage the offerings of Chicago’s resources.
Plant It Forward Farms, like other urban farming non-profits, aims to supply its population with fresh and healthy foods amidst the intense food desert of Houston, Texas. However, because of the overwhelming surge of refugees each year, the Farm has a unique and bipartite mission: to provide jobs for refugees who have not yet obtain the skills to work in this country and to make food accessible to Houston residents. These two foci intertwine in that many of these refugees come to America with agrarian skills, and can therefore quickly learn how to grow fruits and vegetables in this food desert. To achieve this, Plant it Forward Farms supplies classroom and hands-on training. In the end, refugees progress as active citizens, while they and the rest of Houston reap the benefits of their city adopting sustainable living.
In 1995, the Oregon Sustainable Agricultural Land Trust (OSALT) was established as a non-profit land trust with the mission to reserving donated agricultural land as a mode of research and education on sustainable agriculture. In 2017, OSALT uses much of their accumulated land as community gardens both inside and outside the city of Oregon. The organization has also established a program called “The Urban Farm Collective.” This program unites community members to redevelop underutilized lots into urban food gardens, which in turn, will enhance the community’s knowledge about nutrition and eventually combat food insecurity in urban Oregon.