15 years ago, Growing Food Growing Health was established by Nancy O’Connor with the goal of strengthening the community and empowering young people through a local garden at West Middle School with local teenagers as the staff.
Due to her background as a nutrition educator, O’Connor said she saw that many young people lacked an understanding of where their food came from and why fresh produce is important, which she said leads to unhealthy eating habits.
Senior Elinor Russo started working at the garden four years ago and said she keeps coming back because she finds the work to be a highlight of her springs and summers.
“It’s been one of the most important things in my life,” Russo said. “Since I’ve started, I did not imagine that I would enjoy any job as much. It’s definitely helped me get outside of my comfort zone and be more willing to try new things.”
After several years of running the garden and selling produce, O’Connor said she realized as fresh produce became more expensive that just running the garden to sell produce wasn’t enough anymore. Nine years ago, Growing Food Growing Health moved to giving away produce, as O’Connor said the organization’s focus shifted more towards food justice.
“We recognized that we had the ability to grow this beautiful produce and teach youth how to grow it,” O’Connor said. “The piece that was missing was who got the food, and we wanted it to be the people who maybe needed it the most and who didn’t have access to it.”
For employees, like junior Annah Steele, responsibilities expanded past taking care of the garden and growing fruits and vegetables to also manning the stand where community members can take produce; which Steele said ultimately became her favorite part of the job.
“What I loved about it is that we could make real connections with the people that we gave to. It was face to face and you would get to know these people,” Steele said. “Get to know their stories, their names, and they would talk to us. You could tell that they loved that we were there and you love to be there.”
In order to grow the nonprofit even more this year, Growing Food Growing Health is collaborating with the Ballard Center, a food bank in North Lawrence, so fresh produce is available any day of the week in the registered food desert.
“Connecting with other social service agencies in town like Just Food to make sure that we’re getting food to people who need it,” O’Connor said. “It’s all just part of our jobs because it’s the future for all of us.
