Grantees

The Food Project’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. Our community produces healthy food for underserved residents of Greater Boston and the North Shore in Massachusetts.

The Food Project envisions a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, healthy, affordable food.

FoodCorps believes in a future where every child—regardless of race, place, or class—gets the nourishment they need to thrive. We partner with people dedicated to creating that future: from educators and school leaders, to national alliances and community-based organizations, to our AmeriCorps service members and students themselves. We collaborate with these peers to demonstrate the power of food in schools and ensure our country’s systems work together to nurture every child’s potential.  For nearly a decade, FoodCorps has collaborated with school communities to connect kids to healthy food. Our culturally responsive direct service program centers our community partners’ visions to transform schools into places where kids learn about healthy food, fall in love with it, and eat it every day. We leverage our school-by-school impact to influence changes in the systems, policies, and culture that shape our kids' relationship with food.

“Food, What?!” (FW) is a youth empowerment and food justice organization. At FW, youth engage in relationships with land, food and each other in ways that are grounded in love and justice. We provide meaningful space where youth cultivate their empowerment, liberation and wellbeing. We are uniquely positioned as an organization that supports youth well-being by inviting them to directly participate in their local food system through organic farming.  Through all that we do, two things remain centered: youth power and inspiring food. Youth join FW through our Spring Internship, Summer Job Training, Fall Project Management on our Santa Cruz and Watsonville farm sites. FW youth use organic farming, nourishing food and loving community as vehicles to grow on their own terms and in lasting ways. The FW Crew grows, cooks, eats and distributes healthy food while addressing local food justice issues.

Our mission is to cultivate and sustain a resilient local food community in North Central Florida through collaboration, economic opportunity, education, and seed stewardship. From seed to plate, we take a systems-based approach: Southern Heritage Seed Collective preserves southern food culture and biodiversity through seed saving and education. National collaborations help us protect regionally adapted seed and our program offers training, employment, and rehabilitation for adults with disabilities.

Youth Gardening offers hands-on education for elementary aged, at-risk youth. Nature, food, gardening, healthy eating, science, art and more come alive in our gardens.

Culinary Incubator provides facilities and business development to entrepreneurs starting or building a food-based business. We currently support 21 entrepreneurs, including many minority and women-owned operations.

For 20 years, Zenger Farm has been teaching people where healthy food comes from, how it grows, and the importance of eating it every day. Zenger Farm utilizes a 24 acre combined organic farm and wetland to provide unique, hands-on learning opportunities for youth and adults. We are a working urban farm that models, promotes and educates about sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship, community development and access to good food for all. We seek to train a diverse and inclusive, next generation of farmers. As per the USDA 2017 Census, 96% of Oregon’s principal farmers (decision makers) are white. Racism, colonialism, capitalism and other systems of oppression are deeply tied to the history of agriculture in Oregon and the United States. At Zenger Farm, we believe that this trauma and history must be acknowledged, and the resilience of these communities celebrated and honored, if we are to fully empower our Farm Apprentices in future careers managing the land and its natural resources. Programs which do not directly address this history may fail to create a good learning environment for people who are affected by it, particularly Black and Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and notably Latinx people, especially those who have migrated here themselves, or descended from migrant laborers.

Frisco Fastpacs provides weekly food packs to at-risk school-aged children in Frisco ISD schools. For the 2021-2022 school year, Frisco Fastpacs plans to serve 1,100 children across all Frisco ISD schools and provide at least 45,000 weekend meal packs. Each pack provides enough non-perishable, easily prepared food to cover the seven meals from when the children are released from school on Friday afternoon through their return on Monday morning.

Gardeneers cultivates customized school garden programs to ensure each space, and the students and communities who care for them, connect with healthy food and grow to their full potential. Gardeneers was founded in 2014 to provide more equitable access to healthy food and food education for Chicago youth living in food desert communities. We currently serve a network of 20 partner schools in low income, high crime rate communities of Chicago that are also food insecure, where residents do not have convenient or affordable access to fresh healthy foods.

Gardeneers provides direct service weekly garden education programs for students K-12th grade. The pillars of our experiential, STEM based programs are Supporting Student Nutrition, Connecting with Community, and Experiencing Nature. In 2019 Gardeneers served over 2,000 students per week in our hands on garden education programs.

The mission of GROW North Texas is to connect North Texans to food, farms, and community to create a sustainable, secure regional food system that enriches the land, encourages economic opportunity through food and agriculture, and provides equitable access to healthy, nutritious food for all residents.

We believe that everyone should have access to healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food. Looking from a systems perspective, we seek to understand the root causes of food issues.

 Launched in 2018, our Climate Victory Gardens (CVGs) campaign is improving access to healthy food by recruiting new and seasoned gardeners across the country to use regenerative gardening practices. Modelled after the successful Victory Gardens of WWI and WWII, our CVG campaign is recruiting individuals and communities to turn their backyards, nearby vacant lots, parkways, or open fields into spaces that produce healthy, organic food.

Growing Gardens works to support diverse families in all its programs. We are the only organization in the region that donates fresh, organic, local food as well as the education and resources to empower individuals to grow their own family’s food.

Through the Growing Gardens Food Project, we share 20,000 pounds of fresh, organic, locally grown produce with low-income families, mostly through community partner organizations. We also distribute 30,000 plant starts and seeds to support families in growing their own food. The Children’s Peace Garden program teaches the importance of fresh, healthy food, biodiversity and community through organic gardening practices. Hands-on education in ecology, pollinators and our food system, and vermi-composting (worm composting) engage 8,000 children per year.