Our community is a lower-middle-class area where people typically have enough to get by, but are often living paycheck to paycheck. In the last year inflation and economic factors caused our free and reduced lunch population to increase to nearly 50%. Early in the year, our group investigated the biggest needs in our community and our research pointed us in a clear direction, food security.
We would like to add a community orchard to our existing community garden. With funding our group hopes to add an orchard of 10-15 trees at our community garden. All year we have tried to tackle food security, we've shared our community garden harvest, we've cooked community meals, and we've raised money to stock our community food pantry. We've even expanded our projects to include other school districts in the efforts that everyone has safe access to food. After harvesting this fall, we were asked by a local resident to help pick his apple and pear trees. This experience made us realize that fruit trees can be an incredible source of fresh fruit for a community. This led us to brainstorm ways to supplement our community garden with a small orchard.
