We’re nearing the end of GMMA for 2011- today is the last day I’ll be featuring an organization of my own selection; tomorrow I’ll be featuring a selection of those nominated by you! So if you want an organization near to your heart to be in the running for a $50 donation, tell me about it in your comment!  Thanks!

I recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (the whole Kingsolver canon is available for Kindle download through our library, and this one weirdly had no wait list) and I liked it way more than I expected to.  I’m not quite ready to cast aside this urban life and take up farming myself, but in reading it I *was* reminded anew how many city-dwellers, poor city-dwellers in particular, are entirely removed from access to fresh healthy foods, let alone foods locally grown.

The concept of a food desert isn’t a new one, but it’s apt in many Chicago neighborhoods. Many of us struggle to “eat healthy;” imagine how much harder that would be if you lived in an area where the only places to buy food are corner stores and maybe a Walgreens.

Growing Power is technically a national nonprofit, but most of their work is in the Midwest, and I know them for their work in Chicago.  The organization’s mission is to create what it calls Community Food Systems.  In the organization’s words:

these systems provide high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable food for all residents in the community. Growing Power develops Community Food Centers, as a key component of Community Food Systems, through training, active demonstration, outreach, and technical assistance.

In Chicago, that means several urban farms that train community members (including youth, who have a heck of a time finding summer jobs to keep them off the streets) in farming, so that their communities have access to fresh, healthy, affordable food regardless of their economic circumstances.  Growing Power’s farms sell to restaurants and grocery stores, and have recently started providing food to Chicago Public Schools (a HUGE deal, as you know if you have any experience with the microwaved-in-plastic, highly processed food served in most school lunch programs.)

Particularly compelling to me is Growing Power’s work in the community that used to be Cabrini Green, one of the most notorious public housing high rises in a city full of notorious public housing high rises.  As the Cabrini buildings started coming down and the area redeveloped as mixed-income housing, the neighborhood changed so quickly (picture an enormous whole foods and rei being built virtually across the street and you’ll have an idea) that generations of the neighborhood’s residents, and the redevelopment’s mixed-income ideals, threaten to be subsumed by the pace of gentrification. Since 2003, Growing Power has operated a large and vibrant community garden on a patch of land that used to be part of Cabrini:

the overarching goal of the community garden is to help facilitate a thriving diverse community and ensuring that present residents are not cast aside in this process of transformation. . . the farm empowers neighborhood youth and residents to have increased economic opportunities through access to organic produce, nutritional education, and work-force training.

Cool, right?  Will Allen, Growing Power’s “Farmer in Chief”, is kind of a big deal- he’s a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and a James Beard Award winner. Guy knows his stuff. But for me, it’s the micro, community-level focus of Growing Power that is so compelling. They actually make a fair amount of their operating budget by selling their produce, so strictly speaking they are not entirely dependent on donations. But I think their work is so cool, and their mission so important, that I’m happy to feature them here, and to help in some small way.