Our Mission
Growing Gardens uses the experience of growing food in schools, backyards and correctional facilities to cultivate healthy, equitable, communities.
Values
- Access to healthful, culturally appropriate food is an inherent right.
- Individuals and communities are empowered when they have the knowledge and skills to provide food.
- All people deserve recognition and respect for their unique value.
- Joy and fun are essential elements in any activity we host, promote, or undertake.
- Trust, honesty, open-mindedness and accountability are core elements in all we do.
- Quality of life is improved when we respect and honor our environment and when we promote the interconnection of all things.
Growing Gardens is a 501(c)3 organization that helps people grow their own food. We organize hundreds of volunteers to build organic, raised bed vegetable gardens in backyards, front yards, side yards and even on balconies. We support low income households for three years with seeds, plants, classes, mentors and more. Our Youth Grow after school garden clubs grow the next generation of veggie eaters and growers! Through Learn & Grow workshops and work parties, we teach gardeners all about growing, preparing and preserving healthful food while respecting the health of the environment.
We plant seeds for good food and healthy people by making sure low-income people have the resources they need to grow organic vegetables at home. Through this work, community members meet over the backyard garden, through volunteering, by attending classes, and through sharing extra produce.
“Researchers have found that where we live – and the conditions in which we are born, live, learn, work, play and age – determines our health.
These conditions, known as the social-determinants of health, are not a matter of personal choice. Rather, social determinants of health are shaped by economics, politics and social policies that favor some and not others. The end result is that people have unequal access to the basic opportunities to grow up happy and healthy. These inequities are systemic, avoidable and unfair, and result in vast differences in health status, mortality rates and distribution of disease. We can change these inequities, but we have to start by building healthy communities.” — John Hopkins Urban Health Institute, 2013
IRS Forms:
2015 IRS Form 990
2016 IRS Form 990
2017 IRS Form 990
2018 IRS Form 990
Please consider making a gift to Growing Gardens today. We appreciate your help in fulfilling our mission.
