Progress 09/01/09 to 08/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: *The Seattle Farm and Good Food Project was a complex project, ambitious in both scope and scale. It brought together four partner organizations, one of which went under financial and organizational restructuring during the project and had to drop out. The project intended to accomplish different but integrated food system activities through the four organizations, and each provided different services--some of which changed as the project and organizations matured or increasingly understood their communities and participants. *Over 3 years it produced 438 output activities, including 140 work parties; 277 classes held at gardens, parks, farms, and community centers for adults, seniors, children, and teens; 21 field trips to 2 farms; 39 plant start and seed distribution events, and 3 new market stands in low-income neighborhoods. Many classes and activities were translated into as many as five languages. *The project farmed approximately 11 acres each year. *An approximately one-acre urban community farm was designed and created. *Four community gardens participated in the program. *During the 3 years it directly impacted many people in the community through provision of food, education, jobs and volunteer opportunities, leadership roles, and recreational open space. *Over 27,000 people were recipients of food produced by the project, either as recipients of free CSA boxes, food bank contributions, or as customers of the market stands. *Approximately 3,500 people participated in the programs, classes, and market stands. *The project leveraged thousands of volunteer hours. *Over 100 organizations were engaged as partners in the 3-years (some overlap year to year, that is, the organizations are non-unique) *Almost 100,000 pounds of food were generated and handled by the project. *There were approximately a dozen new leadership roles added each year, the majority of which were participants of color, many of whom were immigrants to Seattle. *Dissemination activities were interwoven into the project from the beginning, engaging community members in the design and construction of farm and garden sites. The total number of dissemination activities numbered 414, many of which were also "outcome activities." There were 64 dissemination activities not also considered to be outcome activities. *Dissemination of information to build knowledge, change action, and change conditions in the participating neighborhoods was done in several ways. These included: community food education meetings, community kitchens, educational field trips, market stands, farm work parties, community design meetings for the farm and gardens, teen leaders/trainers hired, garden education classes for city staff and summer childcare staff, composting classes at city community gardens, gardening/cooking classes, and distribution of seeds and plant starts. PARTICIPANTS: Solid Ground- Established anti-poverty, anti-racist organization. Their Lettuce Link program created the subcontracts, monitored invoicing and payment to subcontractors, led the quarterly meetings, coordinated two presentations to City Council, submitted financial reports to USDA, developed and ran the Seattle Community Farm, including educational classes on site. Despite significant leadership changes in this organization, was able to maintain focus on the project and meet all financial responsibilities. * Seattle Tilth- Regional organic gardening organization. This grant was Seattle Tilth's first experience intentionally working with low-income communities and in South Seattle and was the start of a huge organizational overhaul that now includes more communities of color and programming located in lower income neighborhoods. *Delridge Neighborhood Development Association - Led the Healthy Corner Store Initiative and youth engagement. Unfortunately, they were overcommitted and reduced their activities to property management and released their work in healthy food. *Clean Greens-Small, volunteer based organization based in a Baptist Church. They grow significant amounts of food on a farm outside of Seattle and distribute in lower income neighborhoods through a CSA, farm stands and through churches. During this period they experienced tremendous financial strain, staff turnover and remained viable due to a strong volunteer leader. They continue to provide good food, but face funding difficulties.*University of Washington- provided invaluable evaluation assistance during the project. *Public Health, City of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods, Parks and Recreation, and the Seattle Housing Authority were public agencies that helped but did not receive funding through this grant. TARGET AUDIENCES: See previous sections, but target audiences included: residents of low income, predominantly minority and immigrant neighborhoods in Seattle. Also at-risk youth, seniors, clients of food banks and established gardening organizations, and youth educators and program coordinators including community center and city staff. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: The first project modification came after the initial reward when the implementing members of the partner organizations scoped their roles and responsibilities. Despite working with the Parks Department for six months and being promised additional land through the Department of Neighborhoods, viable property for an acre of farmable land was not available through the City. In the end, we were able to partner with a different public entity, the Seattle Housing Authority, but because the land was much smaller than we initially planned, we were no longer able to provide market gardening opportunities and income development for low-income individuals. Additionally, we decided that there were not enough resources to actually create a seed bank but that seed saving classes and distributing seeds to food bank clients was both more in line with our level of expertise, just as useful and ultimately, the most feasible way to integrate the intention of the seed bank. *Another modification came in our approach to working at the community centers. Initially, we intended to train the staff of the Community Center child care facilities, but there was too much staff turn-over so we ended up providing the direct garden education. Luckily, a local resident and Public Health employee helped convince the Community Center Citizen Advisory Board to continue garden education after this grant. We also needed to change the location of some of our work as one of the initially identified community centers faced a two-year long closure and instead of building new gardens, we worked on maintaining and developing continuity for the existing Community Center gardens.* Also, as mentioned earlier, the organization leading the Corner Store Initiative, though making great progress during the first year, suffered much turmoil and reduced their scope their second year and were not able to continue into the third year. The original grant was very ambitious and working with the public sector, though incredibly important, took longer than expected. Throughout this process, the partners met, redrew lines of responsibility, scopes of work and communicated our progress and evaluated our work accomplishments. The original intent of the grant did not change, but it was scaled down.
Impacts
*Given the short timeframe and the variety of activities, it is difficult to attribute outcomes to the project except anecdotally. The food and community environment has been changed in positive ways. There is a new community farm, with many volunteer and training opportunities; there are new market stands and the tenuous farm that supports them still exists; there are numerous derivative classes that stem from partners' train-the-trainer sessions; and hundreds of children and teens have learned about their environment and growing and cooking food. *Quarterly reporting was honed after the first year to better track activities and be more useful to individual programs. Quarterly meetings helped identify common challenges, communication problems, opportunities for cooperation, and a shared sense of a community food system. *Comments from the children's classes suggested that they learned about new foods, where food comes from, and gardening. Children reported eating new things, being willing to try different foods, growing food at home, and even tending worms. *Comments from adults through the farm and market stands suggest that they appreciate the fresh food, the opportunity to try cooking new things at home, and they learned from the activities on the community farm. *The farm is becoming a resource for the community. Neighbors walk through regularly and have mentioned to the farm coordinator how much they enjoy it. Classes regularly visit from local schools and universities. *An unintended possible outcome has to do with the student groups from a school and community center that have used one of the gardens. These were youth with attention or behavioral problems in standard educational settings; the garden time was often used as an opportunity for the youth to get outside and decompress-which made garden education more difficult than expected. However, over time it became clear that some students engaged with the programming and the garden may have had some stabilizing influence on them. This was particularly true as they got to know program staff over time. *Evaluation had 3 intents: to aid organizations understand and improve their programs, to aid the project in seeing/compiling project efforts, and to contribute back to USDA information that could be generalized to other places. The evaluation was best at compiling and recording overall project efforts. It was moderately successful with the organizations, depending on their capacity and interest in understanding results and making changes. For USDA, a change in process indicated by this project is having a screening of participant organizations regarding their capacity to do this work. One organization was so overcommitted to various grants and activities that they almost closed; they reorganized under new management by board directive, and dropped out of the project. Another organization teetered on financial insolvency for the grant period and suffered from staffing turnover. The two largest organizations were the most "successful" based on output measures, used the evaluators most effectively, and provided data that was more reliable than the smaller, lower-capacity organizations.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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