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 | Feb 27, 2017
Spring Awakening

By Kristina Welch | Executive Director

Dear Jovial Friends,

It was a busy winter for the folks at Jovial. Out partner food bank of 3 years was shut down due to financial reasons. In a crazy bout of luck, Jovial Concepts and Jun-Key SuperFoods were able to purchase the building.

The Barnum neighborhood is a food desert, medical desert, and transportation desert with a higher level of poverty than most of Denver.

We are thrilled to bring our services to Barnum and start transforming lawns to gardens. Allison May moved to Barnum 36 years ago. She moved in with her 2 sisters after domestic violence plagued her home and she had nowhere else to go. She was too afraid to return to work and happened across the ACS Community LIFT. She was given a free shower, free medical care, and enough food to last a week.

After about a month of coming in, she applied for a job and helped in the food bank. She met other individuals who were trying to get back on their feet. She eventaully started a work force development program and helped neighbors get everything they needed to go into a job interview. She worked in our building for 25 years.

Last week we held our first community meeting and Allison May shared her story with me. She broke into tears with excitement and gratitude. She was so worried the space would become a liquor store or some other drain on her beloved community. She rallied the Barnum neighbors and got over 500 signatures in support of our work in Barnum.

We now have 8 jovial garden neighborhoods and over 74 gardens! 90% of the food will be donated and 10% will be use at the new Jovial Concepts building to be used in cooking, nutrition, processing, canning, dehydrating clasess and so much more. We will also have space for Totes for Hope to pack HEALTHY backpacks of fresh food to sustain food insecure students over the weekend. We have 15 large gardens and a greenhouse wrapping our new space. Come out and grow with us!

To best serve our community, we are going to need to fix up the building as soon as possible. We need skilled professionals, materials, tables, chairs, shelving, and so much more. If you can help with our this project please reach out to 303-578-2569. Our grand opening will be in May and will include live music and a plant sale!

Permalink

Dec 1, 2016
Biggest Impact Yet!

By Kristina Welch | Executive Director

Thank you for making 2016 our biggest year of impact yet!

We have had so many big changes this year and could not have been a success without your support. We started out the year with our new Arvada neighborhood - the Elderberries. We added 12 garden beds to the Arvada area which brought us up to 7,000 sq ft of growing space in Metro-Denver.

Our new garden leaders met monthly to plan beautiful gardens, they came out weekly to help maintain the gardens, and even learned new software to better track our success in the gardens. But it paid off, we know that over 600 volunteers participated this year and these wonderful volunteers gave over 3,560 hours of their precious time to making sure food got to families in need.

We donated 2,300 lbs to partner food banks (Jeffco Action Center, ACS Lift, and Arvada Food Bank), 2,650lbs to Edgewater Elementary School's food bank, and 1,150 lbs of produce to Lumberg Elementary. That's over 6,000 pounds of fresh produce donated this year.

An additional 1,000 lbs was given out in our CSA, eaten by our garden hosts, and rescued by the Jun-Key Superfoods Co-op.

We also built new gardens at Eagleton Elementary and Piefer Elementary Schools. We provided materials and curriculum at Great Works Montessori and Edgewater Elementary School's Greenhouse. We laid the foundation for beds to be put in at Kyffin Elementary.

So, what does it all add up to? Families like the Espinoza's who are on a fixed income and have 5 grandchildren to feed were able to provide them with healthy dinners all season. It means families like the Scott's can provide healthy vegetables for their son who has life threatening health issues from their back yard. It means we are building a strong community of neighbors and friends like the Elderberries. Jessica from the Arvada community, she is 6, and knows everything growing in her neighbor's gardens. When it is snack time, she grabs her mother's hand and walks to several Jovial Gardens picking carrots, lettuce, beets, and radishes to take home. All the neighbors know her and look out for her, neighbors that had barely spoken in years are having regular pot-lucks and gardening together. It means children are getting valuable education about nutrition and families on a budget don't have to feel so alone.

Your donations supported over 800 families, 42 gardens, and 6 schools in 2016.

Thank you for all you do and we wish you a very jovial holiday season.

Permalink

Sep 9, 2016
More than a Ton!

By Kristina Welch | Executive Director

Hello Jovial Garden Supporters,

We haveharvested OVER ONE TON of produce and we're not even pulling out many tomatoe or winter squash yet!! This year is certainly our biggest harvest, ever. Why does it matter? In the words of Lisa Smith (name changed for privacy), it matters a lot. As a Jovial Garden host in Edgewater for over 2 years, Lisa enjoyed having fresh produce at her finger tips and canning or freezing it for the winter. They weren't well off, but they didn't worry about feeding their 16 year old daughter or 13 year old son.

In Feburary, they sold their Edgewater home and moved to New Mexico. The 6 months after they moved brought Lisa to a solid realization, without a program like Jovial Gardens that offered clean, accessible food, her family's health was decling. Her husband who already suffered from immune system issues was the most sensitive to processed foods. With limited transportation, money, and grocery stores, she looked for every possible solution.

In June she reached out to discuss a satelitte Jovial Garden neighborhood in her community in Sante Fe. Her words were this, "My family participated in the Jovial Gardens Edgewater program for two seasons, and we were so happy that we were able to! Now that we are here, we are having a tough time affording the organic produce. I am so inspired by what Jovial Gardens is doing in that area. There is a small plot in the apartment building for a community garden, and other families like ours that would benefit from having affordable organic food. I really appreciate what you did for our family, and we would love to learn more about how we can help out!"

We hope to help Lisa's family build a garden Spring 2016 and have our first out of state gardens!.

Your donations and support are what have allowed us to help families like Lisa's and to continue to expand our services into new areas. We have over 50 gardens and continue to grow each year. Now is the time to reach out and join a Jovial Garden neighborhood or make a donation to help us continue to offer much needed services to Colorado families.

Sept. 21st is a 30% matching day on Global Giving, we ask that everyone renew their support by making a donation AFTER 10am mountain time, but as close to 10am as possible, to ensure your donation is matched. Thank you again for your ongoing support and making stories like Lisa's possible.

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.