From The Ground Up Farms has established a series of community gardens in unused empty lots, residential treatment facilities, homeless shelters and even low income daycare's, beginning in our poorest neighborhoods. These immersive projects involve residents of all ethnicities and backgrounds in working with experienced farmers and educators to learn how to grow food, cook it and improve their physical/emotional/financial health through a variety of other life skills classes. We feel that if we provide access to healthy food and education in nutrition and life skills, we can improve the lives in our community. By offering these programs our community will improve their nutrition and their health by reducing illness, reducing stress and improving financial and food security. As a by-product, these community gardens will bring neighborhoods together by building bridges between cultures as they work hand in hand to feed their families.
We are impacting hundreds of households and children by offering free healthy food, nutrition and life skills education. We are supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to after school and summer lunch programs, as well as, teaching nutrition at Chico schools. We're also impacting homeless individuals by offering "work for food" programs and other opportunities.
We would like to start a produce stand at each garden and those funds raised by each garden would be used to help to offset the maintenance and material costs, as well as, throw an end of season party for the neighborhood who helped to support the gardens.
Our goal is to teach our community a better path to food security and independence from the overwhelming prices of "nutritional" food at the grocery stores. We don't believe that healthy organically grown food should be a luxury only the wealthy can afford. Our hope is that everyone plants their own garden in their own back yard and pays it forward. Please pass on the lessons and the extra food. Let's change the world!
The following goals will guide our efforts: