The Problem
With this project, our goal is to help spread awareness on the benefits of gardening and nutritional education on eating healthy and organic foods to more K-12 and college students. The FAMU Student Community Garden was founded and operated by student members on March 22, 2014, as a non-profit initiative to help tackle the food desert issue in the South side community of Tallahassee. This was made possible by a kick starter grant from Green For All and the support of Dream Defender and Rethink Energy Florida members. the Since then, we have grown to over 60 student members and have donated over 200 lbs of produce to our members, university faculty, families and the Sowing Seeds Sewing Comfort Ministry church group. We also applied for the Siemens Group's "2014 Student Sustainability Grant Competition" through the FAMU Sustainability Institute in October of 2014, which were we awarded a grant! We were able to use $1500 to implement our 2nd garden plot at the K-12 school FAMU DRS, in April 2015, and hosted a "Grow Your Mind" field day event to plant in grow boxes we built and teach the youth about gardening and composting. Our objective with the Roots & Shoots grant and "Food for Us" will be to continue our initiative to grow healthy organic produce, expand our gardens, and increase our efforts to educate and inspire youth in agricultural and sustainability.
