Kitchen Garden Project Inc Garden Raised Bounty

“All members are emailed an electronic copy of the form prior to a board meeting. At the board meeting, the treasurer reviews the form with the members. A formal vote is taken whether to approve filing of the form.”

“Staff and board members are required to sign the "conflict of interest policy" which is part of the organization's policy and procedures.”

“Compensation of the executive director is determined by the board of directors and is within the range of other groups.”

“Documents are made available upon request.”

“Garden-raised bounty (grub) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to grow healthy food, people, and community. With roots in the land, we create opportunities for people to learn, lead, and thrive. We envision an equitable world where we are all nourished by healthy relationships, resilient community, and good food. Grub provides direct services to and for the residents of thurston county and provides consultative, collaborative services to other organizations and institutions in communities throughout washington state and, on occasion, nationally. Grub maintains various programs including youth programs; a farm; community food solutions; and pollination (program replication).”

“On january 1, 2018, we changed our relationship with tend, gather, & grow from that as fiscal sponsor to it becoming one of our own embedded programs. Tend, gather, & grow is dedicated to educating youth about wild edible and medicinal plants and the rich cultural traditions that surround them. Through the development of a teaching toolkit on northwest plants and providing teacher trainings, the program aims to build food security, promote health, and facilitate connections with the land. Grub gathered a team of twelve people with skills in plant knowledge, innovative teaching techniques, tribal food sovereignty, community programming, evalutation, media outreach, cultural resilience, and holistic approaches to nutrition and wellness to develop the tend, gather, & grow teaching toolkit. Six of the teammembers are tribal. The program draws upon regional native knowledge keepers to ensure learning reflects a cultural resilience and holistic approach to nutrition and wellness. As opposed to standard classroom lectures and testing, learning is built upon student strengths, such as awakening knowledge of common plants and the engagement of tactile senses to ignite an intrinsic curiosity of nature. Participating youth will gain skills to tell their own stories through writing, artwork, and video production.”

“Market stands. 2017-18 saw us engage more than 30 young people in farm-based summer and school year programming. Twenty-six youth, including seven peer leaders, received stipends to participate in 2017 summer programming, which involved growing, harvesting, and marketing more than 10,000 pounds of food and flowers, as well as leading volunteers, participating in field trips, and learning to cook shared meals using produce grown on the farm. Twenty-two youth enrolled in grub school for the school year. During the school year, youth spoke on behalf of grub to local city councils and service clubs. They led workshops for adults participating in the grub institute and helped build several victory garden project gardens, gaining experience as leaders and providers of valuable community resources. Youth also shared their knowledge of food and agriculture with more than 300 pre-k through middle school-aged children in farm-based field trips. As field trip hosts, youth built and demonstrated their knowledge, public speaking, and group facilitation skills. In addition to field trips, grub expanded programming for young children by offering camps focused on engaging them on the land and developing their taste for fresh produce.acmps are also an opportunity for grub school alumni to gain greater leadership and work experience as camp counselors. This year, we drew upon camp curriculum to create kits on topics like "compost- and "parts of a plant" for teens to easily pick up and use during field trips. In 2017, grub also piloted a ten-week program called families on the farm, engaging seven low-income families with young children in weekly activities geared towards increasing knowledge of nutrition and gardening and connection with community. Each day included check-in games, story time, and accessible farm-based activities, and participants took home weekly boxes of fresh veggies. Finally, grub adopted tend, gather, & grow as a formal program. Tend, gather, & grow draws upon a highly skilled team's expertise to create a teaching toolkit on northwest edible and medicinal plants for children and youth. This toolkit will be utilized by community educators and k-12 instructors with an emphasis on serving native and regional communities. In addition to curriculum development, we hosted 16 eight-to-twelve-year-olds in a weeklong tend camp.”

“Systems to create transformations in both. We envision gardens and our gardening programs as opportunities to support veteran volunteers, low- income gardeners, disengaged youth, and other marginalized people in growing networks of mutual aid and community engagement in the food system. We connect people with the sustainable food movement by sharing information and resources needed to grow fresh, healthy, and culturally-appropriate foods, along with mentorship and opportunities for leadership in the program. Our gardens provide physical and emotional health benefits. Gardeners and volunteers are invited into supportive community, while gaining access to nutritious food, tools for increased self-sufficiency, and outdoor activity. Given that six of the top ten causes of death in the u.s. Are linked to behavior and nutrition, and a seventh-self-harm-is linked with social isolation (social connection is shown to reduce suicidal ideation), our work to strengthen local food systems does not just have economic and environmental benefits. It also strengthens the overall emotional and physical resilience of our community. Vgp volunteers and staff build raised bed, double dug, and container gardens alongside new gardeners. We provide new gardeners with seeds, plant starts and cover crops, free access to our extensive gardening workshop series, and a connection to the greater gardening community. In 2017-18, grub built 61 gardens serving low-income families, including two institutional gardens for nonprofit organizations serving low-income populations. One container garden was delivered to stonewall youth; this will be an indoor herb garden cared for by the lgbtqqip2saa youth they serve during drop-in hours. One raised bed garden was built for olympia family connections, an agency which provides homes for 11 teenage foster youth. The garden will be used to teach youth about sustainability and the joy of growing food and playing in the dirt. An intern compiled existing curriculum into a recurring annual introductory workshop series covering garden planning, tending, and ecological health. Workshops were free of charge to vgp gardeners and offered after volunteer drop-in hours on the farm to enable more people to participate and learn. In 2017-18, the vgp solidified a new partnership with the thurston county food bank (tcfb) to develop a veteran-run garden at the food bank's new hub in the city of lacey. In 2017-18, grub hired a veteran as full-time victory garden project coordinator and worked alongside tcfb leadership to navigate permitting and design constraints, recruit volunteers, and engage veterans in the farm design process. The site is designed as a 10,000 sq/ft urban educational garden with demonstrations on beekeeping, rain gardens, native plants, perennial food crops, and raised bed gardening. Each spring, we celebrate the end of our garden-building season with a community-building event we call "may there be gardens" (mtbg). Mtbg build teams (sponsored by various service clubs, local businesses and community organizations) fundraise prior to the event and raise awareness about our work. On the day of the event, each team builds a garden for a vgp gardener and attends an end-of-season shared meal and celebration. This year, many local businesses donated food and supplies. This spring, we hosted more than 75 volunteers on the grub farm and built 10 gardens for families with limited incomes. Once gardens were built, volunteers, staff, new gardeners, and other community members reconvened at the grub farmhouse to eat and celebrate our 25th successful build season. In 2017-18, grub also partnered with olympia pediatrics to pilot the prescription gardens project. "rx gardens" is designed to create clear, meaningful health outcomes for children ages 8-12 diagnosed as obese. Eight families referred to grub received a garden, a micro cohort to learn and grow with, a gardening and health coach, and family support resources.”

“Aimed to deliver useful content (tools, models, resources, and materials) and, at the same time, share facilitation styles and techniques which support relationships-based group process. Pollination programming is about going beyond individual interventions to transform institutions. While engaging and empowering young people is a significant need in our communities, training adult teachers, mentors and role-models creates a powerful ripple effect. Our sister grub school programs serving local school districts thrived this year olympia school district's freedom farmers planned a second level of engagement for youth and integrated youth from capital high school in order to serve the entire school district (70+ youth per year). Tumwater fresh is serving 30+ youth per year, and eatonville school district's program grits engages 16+ youth per year, with growth each year. Meanwhile, we began solidifying plans with gravity learning center (a dropout re-engagement program serving five southwest washington counties) to launch a grub/gravity partnership in 2018-19. Finally, tend, gather, and grow helped host a 2-day conference on decolonizing diets for 35 urban indian health educators in seattle. Attendees included educators from cities all over the country. We hosted a month long train-the-trainer internship for tribal educators and partnered with tsartlip first nation in developing a 13 moons curriculum (involving transcribing elder interviews, compiling notes, and developing activities).”

“Various other small programs and special projects related to mission of the organization.”