Food Project

Build national model of engaging young people in personal change.

Other | United States of America | Capacity Building |

http://thefoodproject.org/

Overview

Build a national model of engaging young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture.Our 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 residents of the city and suburbs provides youth leadership opportunities and inspires and supports others to create change in their own communities. Each year we work with over 120 teens and thousands of volunteers to farm on 70 acres in Lincoln Beverly Boston Lynn and in Wenham Mass. We grow 200000 pounds of food each year without chemical fertilizers or pesticides and donate thousands of pounds of produce to local hunger relief organizations. We sell the remainder of our produce through community supported agriculture (CSA) farm shares and farmers markets. Locally we promote access to fresh affordable produce by building raised bed gardens for residents and organizations offering garden based educational programming and providing opportunities for people to use SNAP/EBT benefits to purchase fresh food. The Food Project also works as a resource center for organizations and individuals worldwide. We provide unique capacity building for organizations and educators who learn from The Food Project s expertise through materials youth training and professional development opportunities. Even projects completely unrelated to farming can draw on our methods for building inspired diverse and productive youth communities. The Food Project has been the subject of a number of research papers some of which we have been able to make available online. We have also made and been the subject of a number of videos available for your viewing. A short history of The Food Project explains how we got where we are today.