Community Investment Fund Spotlight: Introducing Kids to Urban Gardening

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site sup­ports a res­i­dent-led Com­mu­ni­ty Invest­ment Fund that award­ed 15 small grants in 2015. This blog post series high­lights how recip­i­ents used their grant to improve the lives of chil­dren and fam­i­lies in Atlanta’s Neigh­bor­hood Plan­ning Unit V (NPU‑V). 

In this post, Cashawn Myers, exec­u­tive direc­tor of HABE­SHA, Inc., shares how his orga­ni­za­tion used a $5,000 grant from the Com­mu­ni­ty Invest­ment Fund to intro­duce youth in Atlanta’s Mechan­icsville neigh­bor­hood to urban gardening.

Pro­gram basics: HABE­SHA Inc. runs an after-school pro­gram called Sus­tain­able Seeds, where kids main­tain an urban organ­ic gar­den to learn about sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, nutri­tion and envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.

Our pro­gram expos­es these stu­dents to new types of foods — like kale, squash, gar­lic and can­taloupe — and teach­es them how to pre­pare these foods in a healthy way at home. Stu­dents also learn about the health ben­e­fits of many plants found in the gar­den and their role as envi­ron­men­tal stewards. 

The pro­gram, which we launched in 2004, serves 32 stu­dents ages 5 to 12 and oper­ates out of the Dun­bar Learn­ing Com­plex. Ses­sions run for two hours in the after­noon every Mon­day and Wednesday.

Invest­ment details: Sus­tain­able Seeds used our 2015 Com­mu­ni­ty Invest­ment Fund grant to stock up on food-prepa­ra­tion sup­plies, gar­den­ing tools, snacks, soil, seeds and seedlings. We also took our stu­dents on a field trip to the Atlanta Botan­i­cal Garden. 

Evi­dence of suc­cess: Our stu­dents are con­nect­ing with nature, learn­ing in a nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment and eat­ing some good healthy food!

At the school year’s halfway mark, most of our stu­dents were able to dis­tin­guish between healthy and unhealthy foods as well as artic­u­late the impor­tance of prop­er eat­ing habits. They are also using the sci­en­tif­ic method to apply obser­va­tion skills and hypothe­ses to exper­i­ments per­formed in the garden.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Invest­ment Fund at a Glance

What: A Casey-fund­ed pro­gram that awards a total $50,000 in small grants rang­ing from $500 to $5,000.

Who and Where: A res­i­dent board over­sees the fund, which is open to com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions and net­works in Atlanta’s NPU‑V.

Why: To pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven change by empow­er­ing res­i­dents to tack­le com­mon neigh­bor­hood challenges.

When: Appli­ca­tions for the 2016 Com­mu­ni­ty Invest­ment Fund cycle are due March 18, 2016.