On a scorching-hot July day, longtime DeKalb County grower Edna Lora pulled out 50 pounds of produce from a raised bed at an elementary school. It was mostly tomatoes, both green and those just ripening. After bagging the harvest, she dropped it off at a nearby community food pantry.
Take that, COVID-19.
When the pandemic turned idle school gardens into weeds, robbed urban growers of income streams, and created long lines at food banks, two Atlanta nonprofits joined forces to fight back.
The response is Project Giving Garden, where urban growers are being paid to turn 102 metro-area school gardens into a harvest of vegetables that is going back into the community to feed families.
The nonprofit Captain Planet Foundation oversees more than 300 metro Atlanta school learning gardens, providing teachers and students with everything from tools to lessons. The schools, however, are responsible for taking care of their own garden beds, and, when everything shut down in mid-March, no one was around to prepare the soil and start early spring planting.
“We didn’t want students and teachers returning to school to fallow gardens,” said Ashley Rouse, Captain Planet development manager.
The Atlanta nonprofit Food Well Alliance tends the soil and puts it to good use during the pandemic. Food Well works with urban growers and community gardeners to increase locally grown produce and urge people to grow their own food.
The two organizations partnered together on Project Giving Garden. Captain Planet reached out to schools and raised funds for the project. Food Well hired urban farmers to work the beds, and make sure the harvest went back into each school community. At most schools, the vegetables are donated to pantries that serve the area, but at some schools the produce goes directly to families in need.
Lora’s harvest came from a bed at Toney Elementary School in Decatur. Lora, 62, works nine school gardens in DeKalb, each one now brimming with summer crops of cucumbers, squash, peppers, green beans, and lots of tomatoes, which are always very welcome at community pantries.
She said Project Giving Garden is a “win-win” for the community and the schools. At some schools, teachers stop by to chat and help.
"We're working together and learning from each other and having fun," Lora said.
Food Well Executive Director Kim Karris said farmers are eager to keep growing despite the pandemic. Even as some of their dependable income streams, like sales to restaurants, dried up, public demand for fresh, locally grown produce is higher than ever, Karris said.
The pandemic is shining a spotlight on the availability of food — especially healthy food, said Fred Conrad, Food Well community garden manager.
“There’s a greater awareness among people that diet affects health outcomes for years to come,” he said. “Everyone’s paying more attention to what they eat and they’re looking for a healthier diet.”
Families who rely on food banks want something more nutritious than products that are shelf stable. Getting the fresh produce to these distribution sites has been tricky, Conrad said. Many facilities lack storage and will only accept it on certain days. Growers try to time it so the harvest gets to the pantries as close as possible to the distribution dates.
With the coronavirus disrupting now another school term, both organizations, Captain Planet and Food Well, are discussing whether to continue Project Giving Garden through the fall planting.
“In some ways, the coronavirus has been a silver lining in that we understand local food’s power,” said Karris. “Our local growers have become heroes for the first time. It’s a shame that it took a crisis to get us here, but I’m really proud that they were ready for the moment.”
HOW DOES PROJECT GIVING GARDEN INSPIRE?
“We wanted to be able to help people in need, but also, when the kids came back, we wanted this to be a gift to them. We wanted them to come back to a vibrant school, a vibrant community, and a vibrant garden.” — Fred Conrad, community garden manager, Food Well Alliance
“What’s really fantastic about this Project Giving Garden is, not only are we utilizing the space that is designed to grow food, but we’re going to be able to hand off these lovingly maintained gardens to the schools that have participated. They’re not going to have to come back to a horribly weedy situation.” — Edna Lora, DeKalb County grower and community gardener with Partners in Action for Healthy Living
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