Give Healthy Food to 462 Colorado Families in Need

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!