Food Security United States Project #15428

Give Healthy Food to 462 Colorado Families in Need

by Jovial Concepts

Give Healthy Food to 462 Colorado Families in Need

Project Report | Oct 6, 2015
Bolstering Our Presence In The Community

By Mike Geddes | Garden Manager

Fresh Produce For All

Hi! Today, I would like to take the time out to introduce you to one of our newest team members, "Sara."(name changed for confidentiality) Sara is a freshman at Denver University where she is a member of the Environmental Studies Living Learning Community. She hopes to use her background in Biochemistry combined with her volunteer service with us, in order to prepare herself for a position in Peace Corps, as it is her dream job. The Living Learning Communities at DU are groups of students who upon enrollment agree to live together, take classes together, and even participate in community service together. We are very gracious to be partnered with them, as they have provided us with three extremely enthusiastic interns including "Sara", whom we have empowered to develop a community composting initiative with our help.

Partnerships such as these are vital to sustaining a community gardening initiative. With limited staff, it can be quite challenging logistically to manage close to 40 gardens. However, with continued backing from our gracious garden hosts, the outlying communities, and local institutions/organizations we have made it work quite well. For this garden season alone, we have provided over 4300 pounds of food for local food banks: 2500 pounds of which was fresh produce grown at our own gardens and the rest from various community partners.

None of this would be possible without all of the support we have managed to garner over the course of the season. We have had hundreds of volunteers come out since the beginning of the season. Just this past week, we had over 50 visitors to our gardens! We facilitated Service Days for both Regis University and DISH network over the weekend. Earlier in the week, we were visited by a group of students from an alternative high school for homeless youth. Most of them had never been to a farm or garden, nor had the experience of picking their own food. It was simply enthrallng to watch as students who were proudly proclaiming their distaste for tomatoes at the beginning of the day, were clamoring about how flavorful our Yellow Pear Cherry Heirloom Tomatoes were by the end of the day. In fact, their teacher was so pleased with the experience that we have allowed them to take care of our newest beds in order to provide a longer term service learning opportunity for his youth.

As encouraged as we are by this progress, we know our work is truly never over. There are already gardens waiting to be added to fold for next season, and we will need your help to make sure we can accomodate them

If you are interested in volunteering or getting involved please email info@jovialconcepts.org or call 303-578-2569

Thank you for your support of Jovial Gardens!

Community Partners

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Jul 7, 2015
A Jovial July

By Michael Geddes | Garden Manager

People wait all year for the 4th of July. The fireworks exploding in the air, and the grilling food that you can smell from blocks away, combine to create one of the most memorable days of the year. While most of them are unforgettable, this one will always be special. Despite the holiday, the Jovial staff was back in the gardens tending to our plots. It was a Jovial family affair, complete with volunteers, girlfriends, classmates, and even a mom.

While we all can appreciate a good-time, there is no time to slack off in the midst of such an important growing season. Last year, we were able to produce over 2500 pounds of food with our 5000 square feet of garden space. This year we have doubled the amount of area we are tending to, and hope to be able to triple the amount of production. Ambitious goals, but we believe they are more than reachable. Now in our second season, there is much that we have learned and improved upon. We have already seen some bountiful harvests of lettuce, radishes, bok choy, and snap peas. Even some mustard greens and mountain spinach have been plucked. But we should really start building towards our goals when our harvests of squash, and tomatoes start to come around.

Strategic alliances have helped to truly round out our program. Beneficial relationships with volunteer groups such as Project Helping, and One Brick have allowed us to strengthen our volunteer base. That combined with empowering returning volunteers with leadership roles, allows us to allocate our resources more efficiently and stay on top of the task at hand: managing nearly forty community gardens and distributing the resulting produce to those who need it most.

In the fall, we plan to add some interns from local colleges to bolster our program. This will not only allow us to groom the next generation of innovative, urban farmers, but it also provides us with our own on-campus spokespeople. How awesome is that?

If you are interested in volunteering or getting involved please email info@jovialconcepts.org or call 303-578-2569

Thank you for your support of Jovial Gardens!

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Apr 8, 2015
Building Community A Garden At A Time

By Michael Geddes | Garden Manager

Hello and Thank You,

We are truly overwhelmed by all the support we received on GlobalGiving this month and sincerely thank all of you for your efforts.

We are honored to have had so many people share our emails, Facebook posts, and engage with us.

My name is Mike Geddes, and I was recently made Garden Manager here at Jovial Concepts. As the newest member of the team, I am continually blown away by what we are able to do with the help of the community. With my background in community gardening, I have seen many a garden fail because of lack of community support and engagement. However, in my short time here I have been deeply encouraged by the amount of support we continually receive.

Our entire model is based around developing community. All our land is donated by the community. We are very fortunate to have garden hosts who are kind enough to allow us to grow food for needy populations on their property. Each weekend they allow us to turn their front lawns and backyards into outdoor classrooms where we specialize in hands-on learning. A lot of them come out and join in to support the volunteers, either with shovels or snacks.

Our plants come as a result of our partnership with the community. We share a greenhouse with Edgewater Elementary, where we currently have thousands of seedlings just waiting to be transplanted. Here we facilitate garden education classes for the youth, which will help us to nurture the next generation of urban gardeners and farmers.

Even all of our labor comes from within the community. People of all ages come out to join us in the gardens. From 10 year olds who need community service hours to earn their black belt, to stay-at-home moms itching to get their hands dirty, we have seen it all. While gathering such consistent support every weekend is a feat in itself, the true magic of the day happens as you watch these strangers forge lasting and impactful relationships all while dedicating their free time to help those less fortunate than themselves.

Most important, our food goes right back into the community to help those who need it the most. Our goal is to once again feed over 250 food insecure families in the region of Metro Denver.

We are excited to announce that we have expanded our gardens to include many families on our waitlist and have a goal to double our produce donation in 2015 to 5,000lbs!

While we believe this to be a more than feasible task, we can't possibly succeed without your help.

We are looking for a few more volunteers to lead activities each week at the Elementary School and as spring quickly approaches, we need more volunteers for the gardens.

If you are interested in volunteering or getting involved please email info@jovialconcepts.org or call 303-578-2569

Thank you for your support of Jovial Gardens!

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