Building Resilience in Appalachia

What a great summer it has been so far this year at Community Food Initiatives! We are in the heart of our busy season here at the end of August, and we are excited to share the updates on how we are building resilience in Athens County and Southeast Ohio.

Donation Station is having a great growing season so far! Donation Station has distributed over 31,000 pounds so far this year and has invested $5,800 in the local food economy by purchasing directly from farmers. Furthermore, we have received over $12,000 in in-kind produce donations from various sources, and we have had commitments from various organizations that will support buying fresh produce throughout the fall and winter seasons.

Our Gardens Program has been building resilience in many ways throughout this summer season. We have been leveraging our Donation Station plots in our Community Gardens in order to provide additional produce to local food pantries. Our Gardens Team has also created, published, and distributed a School Gardens Curriculum which supports teachers in incorporating gardens curriculum into their gardens. Finally, our Gardens Program Director Molly Gassaway visited Blooming View Montessori for a garden workshop with their preschool class. The kids tasted different veggies from the garden, learned about how things grow, and then they headed outside for some hands-on activities in their very own garden beds. 

Community Food Initiative’s Food Access Mapping project, also known as SEO Foodlink, is on an exciting journey forging a new partnership with West Virginia University Food Justice Jab and Ohio University Geography Department. We are excited about what this means for our food access map and what new additions this may bring to the project.

The growing season is in full swing and we’re busy back in the gardens with weekly work parties, and at the Athens Farmers Market and Chesterhill Produce Auction, at each event twice weekly.  Because people are growing and donating more food, and we’re purchasing more food, we have more to distribute! We’re back to distributing locally grown/produced food twice each week, and we’ve also been able to do some special distributions of greens to partner organizations that provide free meals.  All of this programming happens thanks to your support! When we ensure that everyone in the community has access to locally grown/produced food, whether through immediate access to food or through garden access and education, we’re not only supporting individuals facing food insecurity, but also working for transformative change through promoting continued interest in our local food system.  

Some big events have happened since kicking off this campaign:

• We hosted our seed and plant-start giveaways, distributing over 4,000 plants and reaching hundreds of families throughout the region.
• We collaborated with Athens Public Libraries to host bucket gardening workshops, where participants learned how to garden even without garden space.  Attendance was great!
• We helped sponsor the Nelsonville Community Dinner, sharing an awesome meal featuring locally-grown food with over 150 people.  It was an awesome event, and inspiring to see several organizations work together to make it happen.

Thank you again for your support!  We only create transformative change with engagement from the entire community, and we know our community is both invested and expansive.

With much gratitude,

The CFI team