With the growing season just around the corner, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Gardens For Everyone program is in full bloom. Folks can’t wait to get their hands in the dirt, and at a sunny garden box building day, volunteers work to ensure that healthy, fresh food is accessible to all.
The Gardens For Everyone program gifts individuals, families, and organizations with the tools they need to grow their own food—from handmade garden boxes, to seeds, to education and mentoring. Boxes have been built for a cultural center, homeless shelter, women’s center, and more in the past. The program’s goal is to build 50 boxes by June, which they foresee surpassing by 10 to 20 boxes.
On a recent warm day in March, volunteers gathered at the Food Shuttle Farm to pre-assemble boxes for Brown’s Early Learning Childcare Center in Durham. Cheryl Brown, the director of Brown's, used to garden directly in the ground in the space where the raised beds are being built. She wanted to switch to raised beds because they are more manageable, and she is hoping the teachers will get excited about the gardens and chickens. She wants it to be an engaging space for the children, teachers, and neighbors. Since downtown Durham is home to an older community, she wants everyone to be able to participate in the therapeutic benefits gardening offers and hopes to produce enough food to share with the community and to use at the childcare center.
Thanks to funding from McGriff Insurance Services through their Lighthouse Project, the Brown’s Early Learning Childcare Center will ultimately receive ten garden boxes and a chicken coop, along with educational resources. Robert Carver, on behalf of the funder, shares that, “McGriff Insurance Services is very pleased to be able to provide support for the Gardens For Everyone Program and Inter Faith Food Shuttle. The Lighthouse Project is one of the highlights of our year and our staff are very proud to work for an organization with such a strong belief in giving back to our communities. We believe that in a community just like in a garden, you must put in time and effort to build it from the soil, and then continuously maintain it, in order for it to grow and flourish. This is our philosophy and driving force behind the annual Lighthouse Project.”
The Gardens For Everyone program also provides an excellent training opportunity for volunteers. Anna is a hospital worker who started volunteering with the farm programs when she had free time during the week, and recently began helping with the building days. Anna mentioned, “I wanted to learn how to make garden boxes to now be able to make one of my own.”
Another pair of volunteers, Noah Wolfe and Shannon Pinnell, are Park Scholars at NC State University. As co-chairs of the Class of 2022’s legacy committee, they’re leading their class in a project to add value to the community of Raleigh. After searching for a way their class could contribute to areas such as education, food insecurity, and sustainability, they found the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle at the intersection of all three.
“We’re here today to learn how to build the boxes so that we can teach our other class members to do it, so a little bit like guinea pigs,” Shannon laughed. “And then also helping the Food Shuttle build some documentation to easily be able to give people a binder and say this is how you make a garden.”
To volunteer for future Gardens For Everyone builds, please visit our website.