Powering Community Gardens Across the US

Happy Spring!

At SPI, spring is always a busy time for us, as it represents the time where we do a lot of the leg work that allows us to build gardens and communities across the country.

In 2022, we got over 267,000 seed packets into the hands of local partners across the country for school and community garden projects. That’s enough vegetable seed to produce 9,724,140 vegetable servings!

Now, as spring is springing and planting seasons are approaching in 2023, we have been working to get more vegetable seed into the hands of partners to grow gardens, build community, and promote food literacy and local food systems across the country. 

So far, we have distributed 43,100 seed packets to our community partners, and we’re just getting started. From Chicago’s school districts to libraries in Arizona, Colorado, and more, to the Department of Public Health in North Carolina, our vectors for vegetable seed distribution are diverse and ever-growing. 

We know that food justice is a growing concern in the US. In a country that boasts one of the highest GDPs in the world, America is seeing growing wealth disparities, and one place that is reflective of that is communities’ access to healthy food. In fact, recent studies suggest that food insecurity rates are as high as 1 in 5 amongst American families, a statistic that has grown in recent years. 

But we know that access to food is not created equal. We focus on vegetable gardens because many under resourced communities have diets that are high in processed foods and have little access to fresh vegetables and fruits - which are critical to a well-balanced diet. 

Through our community garden programs, we are increasing access to healthy food, building community resilience, and promoting food literacy. 

Stay tuned to hear about our community partners’ successes once their gardens are planted in growing in the coming months. 

Thank you for your support- we wouldn’t be able to do this without you. 

Happy gardening,
Georgia

As 2023 begins, we’re gearing up for spring gardens across the US. But before we dive into that, let’s reflect on the impact we had this past year. 

In 2022, we amped up our domestic programming here in the US. We believe all families deserve access to healthy, nutritious food, and as rising inequalities effect communities across the US, we decided to bring our focus here to the homefront. 

In 2022, we got over 267,000 vegetable seed packets into the hands of community organizations across the country. That’s enough vegetable seed to produce 9,724,140 vegetable servings! From indigenous reservations, school gardens, and community gardens, these seeds not only grew nutritious food for communities in need, but offered a place of community connection and a curriculum for students and young people to develop a relationship to their food and knowledge of where it comes from. 

In 2022, we got; 15,000 seed packets into the hands of agricultural-based free food distribution programs and learning centers in Buncombe, NC in the foothills of Appalachia; 2,000 packets to low-income neighborhoods in Chicago, IL; 27,000 packets to Pine Ridge Reservation, SD where residents have only one grocery store and suffer from extreme food insecurity; 23,000 packets to Conscious Alliance headquarters in Colorado for future distribution; and 200,000 seed packets to Creighton Community Foundation, a group of community leaders focused on equipping their local school district in Phoenix, AZ with resources to support community development. 

As 2023, we aim to grow this project even more: fighting food deserts and growing food literacy across the country. Already, we just sent out an entire pallet of seed to Society of St. Andrews, whose mission is to bring people together to harvest and share healthy food, reduce food waste, and build caring communities by offering nourishment to hungry neighbors. We can’t wait to see the gardens that are grown through these seeds. 

Thanks for being on this journey with us. It’s thanks to supporters like you that we are able to grow gardens to build more resilient communities.