Growing Green Urban Farm (Summer Location)
Growing Green is an urban, organic agricultural training program that develops life-skills and provides meaningful work to low-income, at-risk youth in Buffalo.
Started in 2003, the program began working with local youth on our urban farm, teaching them to grow food organically and about how to build community through food.
Growing Green developed a peer education initiative, where youth run after school workshops about sustainable urban agriculture, nutrition and and healthy cooking. It also has many community outreach efforts, including community a "Be Vocal Eat Local Week," "Eat-Up," an annual youth conference on food issues, and a local food access guide to help people find healthy food.
In 2006 we began our youth enterprise, Growing Green Works, selling organic local made food products to help support our employment and training of youth all year around.
In Growing Green youth gain knowledge about their own food, nutrition, and food systems issues. We use hands-on activities in MAP'S award-winning gardens, in the MAP shared use commercial kitchen, on the farm, and at local schools to empower youth to live healthier and be agents of positive social change in their communities.
Through their work learning and teaching others, youth acquire marketable job and life skills, an increased knowledge of good nutrition and improved nutritional practices, and business ownership experience. Specifically, the Growing Green Program offers youth involvement in:
* Growing vegetables & herbs organically in raised-bed gardens
* Soil remediation (planting specific plants which remove soil toxins)
* Composting experiments such as vermi-culture (worm composting)
* Leadership Training
* Development of garden-based businesses
* Aquaponics (fish and plants growing in a closed ecological system)
During the growing season, youth focus on hands-on activities in the garden and marketing and selling their produce locally. By transforming vacant lots into community gardens, youth actively participate in the building, planting, maintaining and harvesting of eight vacant lots with thirty raised beds using organic and sustainable farming methods.
As the growing season ends, the focus of the program shifts to business education, business and garden planning activities, program evaluation, and planning & implementing community projects.
In the fall of 2003, MAP contracted with the University of Buffalo's Department of Urban and Regional Planning to complete a Community Food Security Assessment and Plan for Buffalo's West Side.
This plan, which has won local, state, and national awards, has provided a base for moving Growing Green towards it's goal of ensuring access to quality, affordable food. In Growing Green's second year (September 2004), the USDA awarded MAP a $265,000 grant to expand and sustain the program over three years. Growing Green continues to serve as a local model for sustainable community development.
Info found at:
www.mass-ave.org
Growing Green Urban Farm (Summer Location)
389 Massachusetts Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14213
Phone 716-882.5327 ext.2
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