Healthy Communities Grant Partners

Sprout City Farms has been cultivating educational urban farms since 2010 that are a platform for food access, education, health, food justice advocacy, ecological stewardship, community wealth building, and neighborhood resiliency. In 2021, they began expanding to a larger rural site, growing food under solar panels through a farming technique known as agrivoltaics. Additionally, Sprouts City Farms has continued to increase the reach of their farmer training programs by building an incubator farm for aspiring farmers to test out their business plans. The organization believes strongly in community partnerships and continues to develop capacity for thought leadership through coalition building and sharing their models for replication with institutions like schools and park systems everywhere.

The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation is partnering with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County to support their organic garden project at the Max M. Fisher Boys & Girls Club in Riviera Beach, Florida. Through this program, children and teens in grades K-12 will learn how to plant, maintain, and harvest an organic garden via weekly education sessions and hands-on gardening experiences. Youth will ultimately boost their nutrition, confidence, and curiosity, while also learning to become stewards of the environment.

Local First Arizona is committed to building community and economic development across Arizona. Their work connects people and locally-owned businesses to build a diverse, inclusive and prosperous Arizona economy. Funding from their Healthy Communities grant will support the South Phoenix Healthy Food Entrepreneur Center which aims to strengthen the food system in South Phoenix by working with farmers in a commercial kitchen incubator to develop strategies for growing their food businesses. Local First aims to increase local food production, diversify locally grown offerings, and connect growers to markets across South Phoenix where they can sell their fresh produce while helping to strengthen the local economy.

The Common Market connects communities with sustainable family farms, building an interdependent distribution network that empowers small producers and provides food procurement practices that are socially and environmentally sound. The organization’s Food Access Fund provides discounted pricing on healthy food purchases to mission-driven organizations committed to alleviating food insecurity in their communities. The primary beneficiaries of this program are low-income, urban communities where access to healthy fresh food is scarce, hunger is high, and diet-related diseases are prevalent. The Common Market estimates that 150,000 individuals will receive nutrition assistance this year through the Fund.

First Place AZ is a community-integrated living center, where young adults with autism and other neuro-abilities learn independent living skills, with a goal of living on their own. The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation has invested in age/ability-appropriate nutrition education, cooking classes and a community gardening program at First Place AZ. In 2019, with grant funding from Sprouts, award-winning chef, Charlene Badman, hosted monthly cooking and gardening classes for residents at First Place AZ and succeeded in building out a loyal following with the desire and interest to do more. Funding from Sprouts will support the existing cooking, nutrition and gardening programs at First Place AZ and will allow for the expansion of the gardening program to two additional residential sites.

Partners for Education Agriculture and Sustainability (PEAS) hosts gardening and nutrition education programs across 15 elementary schools in Austin, Texas. Their mission is to cultivate connection with the natural world through outdoor learning and edible education. To achieve this, PEAS brings together STEM, agriculture, nutrition, and environmental literacy lessons with hands-on activities for kids. With an increased request for professional development among teachers and administrators working in the schools where PEAS hosts programs, the Healthy Communities Grant will be used to develop and launch a professional development course for adults and to launch a summer camp program for kids, keeping students engaged in outdoor education, even when school is out of session.

Garden School Foundation (GSF) provides garden-based education to children in Title I schools across Los Angeles. Their Seed to Table program teaches 3,000 students each year how to grow, harvest, and prepare healthy foods. In 2018, GSF launched the Cafeteria to Compost program at 24th St. Elementary, diverting 2,000 pounds of food waste each month from the lunch tables to the school garden’s compost piles. As a Healthy Communities Grant recipient, GSF aims to increase their monthly diversion of food waste to 4,000 pounds, expand their food recovery and redistribution efforts, and bring the Cafeteria to Compost program to six other schools.

The Orlando Health Foundation created the Healthy Lifestyles Program to curb obesity in Orange County, Fla. Through this program, the Foundation provides nutrition education and physical fitness activities to youth, focusing on groups disproportionately impacted by obesity, including those with physical disabilities and children from non-English speaking households. Combining in-person cooking instruction with personalized coaching, the Healthy Lifestyles Program is bringing healthy change to children and teens across Orlando.