Mission and Purpose
GRuB grows healthy food, people, and communities. Our mission is to inspire positive personal and community change by bringing people together around food and agriculture. We do this by partnering with youth and people with low-incomes to create empowering individual and community food solutions and by offering tools and trainings to help build a just and sustainable food system.
History
In 1993, Richard Doss began building gardens for low-income ... Läs mer
Mission and Purpose
GRuB grows healthy food, people, and communities. Our mission is to inspire positive personal and community change by bringing people together around food and agriculture. We do this by partnering with youth and people with low-incomes to create empowering individual and community food solutions and by offering tools and trainings to help build a just and sustainable food system.
History
In 1993, Richard Doss began building gardens for low-income people in
Washington State’s South Puget Sound region. In 1996, Blue Peetz began a garden program for youth and seniors. In 2001, these projects merged to become GRuB. Over the years we have built the framework of an established community non-profit that empowers people to grow good food, engages youth, families & veterans in transformative work, and welcomes hundreds of people into the GRuB community and the good food movement. GRuB’s approach bridges the fields of sustainable food systems, education, health care and hunger relief by engaging underserved populations in innovative, holistic, and community-centered solutions.
GRuB’s work is founded on the belief that everyone is powerful regardless of current life circumstances. We believe that good food is a human right, and use it as an anchor for growing vibrant multicultural community, through our programs including GRuB School, Pollination, Cultivating Community and Leaders, Victory Farm, and the Kitchen Garden Project. We cultivate community and leaders by providing common ground, resources, and relevant tools to program participants in order to “bring everyone to the table” and share stewardship of our mission.
Who We Serve
GRuB partners primarily with youth, veterans, and families who are living in poverty (typically 185% of the federal poverty level or below) and/or are under-served in the areas of education, food security, and emotional and physical well-being. Our direct programming serves roughly 800 Thurston County residents annually, with another 1,000+ served through more indirect and/or less quantifiable efforts. Our programs include: specific outreach to transitioning veterans to provide meaningful volunteer opportunities along with peer-to-peer support (Victory Farmers), a summer job training program & academic year CTE credit-based program for disengaged high school students at high risk of dropping out (GRuB School), experiential learning for youth of all ages on a 2 acre urban farm (Field Trip Program), provides a garden, mentorship & comprehensive gardening & cooking education to low-income families (the Kitchen Garden Project), offers technical assistance, project management & coaching to communities seeking to replicate our programs (Pollination), and multicultural communication training to parents, volunteers, partner organizations, and donors (Cultivating Community & Leaders.) People are becoming increasingly concerned with taking steps to ensure that the sources of the food they eat are close at hand. Our programs represent the ultimate on-the-ground realization of these values. We aim to provide more people with opportunities to get outside on small farms and home gardens. This results in a greater share of the food consumed in our community coming from local and sustainable sources and the seed of inspiration being planted for a new generation of food justice advocates. In order to address the underlying and root causes of hunger, low-income residents must be empowered to organize in their own communities and come together to address the scarcity of affordable, healthy food.
The following is an abbreviated version of our current five-year Strategic Plan. In an effort to maintain brevity, we have trimmed our objectives down to the big-picture elements. Our full plan can be found at: http://goodgrub.org/2014/10/strategicplan
STRONG BONES:
* Improve efficiency and effectiveness by making improvements to infrastructure, policies, and procedures (financial, human resources, staffing, etc.)
* Strengthen role of the Board as we mature organizationally
GRuB SCHOOL, YOUTH WORK, AND "POLLINATION":
* Improved academic engagement (credits, attendance, behavior)
* Increased leadership & engagement (environmental stewardship, public-speaking)
* Increased # of youth who go on to college, trade school, or productive endeavors
COMMUNITY FOOD SOLUTIONS:
* Improved understanding of growing, cooking, and preserving local vegetables
* Increased food security among people with low incomes
* Improved sense of well-being, community, and self-efficacy
GRUB IN THE FOOD MOVEMENT:
* Grow thousands of pounds of food each year and distribute this food through diverse channels, including school districts, food banks, events, and sales
* Increased number of interns who receive sustainable agriculture education
CULTIVATING COMMUNITY LEADERS:
* Increased number of leadership volunteer positions available
* Host annual Cultivating Community & Leaders trainings
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