Help Build Iron Street Farm on Chicago's Southside

Dear Friends,

As we approach the end of 2014, we have a lot to be thankful for: family, friends, health and Good Food. Locally, our Good Food System is growing in many positive ways, yet there is much more that needs to be done in building a just Good Food System in our community and communities around the country and the world. We wanted to share with you some of our most noteworthy accomplishments of 2014.

• We started the year by making history with the largest farm to school procurement in the history of the USDA, by selling 40,000 pounds of carrots to Farm Logix, a farm to school procurement organization.
• Growing Power had more than 30,000 visitors tour our Community Food Center located at 55^th Street & Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee.
• In May, Growing Power held our first Good Food Revolution 5K Walk-Run, with more than 200 people participating.
• During the summer months, we installed 30 gardens at Milwaukee licensed daycare facilities with the assistance of a grant from the City of Milwaukee’s Community Development Grants Administration.
• We distributed more than 3,000 bags of fresh produce through our Farm to City Market Basket program.
• In November we began the Haitian Aquaculture Project, a program through which Haitians will visit Growing Power to be trained in aquaponics and upon their return to Haiti, will be joined by two aquaponics experts to continue that training. This revolutionary project was funded by the U.S. Haitian Embassy.
• More than 400 people were trained in community food systems through our “From the Ground Up” workshop series held one weekend each month, January through June.
• In June, 8 people graduated from our Commercial Urban Agriculture program.
• 1450 people from across the globe visited Milwaukee November 7-9 to participate in our 3^rd National-International Urban & Small Farms Conference.
• Growing Power received funding from the USDA to launch the Fresh Moves program, a mobile market program that will serve some of Chicago’s largest food deserts with repurposed Chicago Transit Authority buses.  
• At our Chicago, Milwaukee & Madison locations we continued our Youth Corps program, through which more than 350 youth were engaged in sustainable agriculture and food literacy.
• We started the Farmers for Chicago workshop series – a series of 6 workshops throughout the spring to train new growers in Chicago. This project is funded primarily through a grant from the USDA Community Food Project program.
• In partnership with Root Cause, we re-launched Fresh Moves Mobile Market through an anniversary grant from the Polk Brothers Foundation. Fresh Moves is a program that will provide Chicago’s food deserts access to fresh and healthy produce via mobile markets made from re-purposed Chicago Transit Authority buses.
• Once again we exhibited at the Chicago Flower and Garden show with an elaborate display of edible and ornamental plants. Growing Power also collaborated with the Chicago Park District and presented two bee keeping and mushroom workshops at the Flower and Garden show.
• Youth Corps members partnered with After School Matters Culinary Program to grow produce for their teen cuisine buffet, attended by over 100 participants.
• We began selling Growing Power produce at 10 Chicago area Food Oasis-Walgreens stores in Chicago’s food deserts.
• The first class of Badger Rock Middle School 8th graders graduated in June. They learned about sustainable agriculture methods from participating in Growing Power programming during their middle school years.
• Growing Power Madison continued to offer free monthly community dinners to the neighborhood surrounding the Badger Rock Middle School.
• We collaborated with the Odyssey program, an adult education program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. This partnership is facilitated by one of Growing Power’s board members, Ariel Kaufman.

Looking forward I know that we can continue to grow the Good Food Revolution. However, in order for our growth to meet the demand we need community minded people to continue to invest in our cause.   We hope that you will consider continuing your support of Growing Power this holiday season because “Together We Are Growing Power”.

Happy Holidays to You & All!

Links:

• http://www.growingpower.org