Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Throughout the course of this project we expanded program elements offered from 3-5. At-large, our target audience for all programs included low-income households in Lowell, MA, particularly those living in low-income/low-access neighborhoods as defined by the USDA Food Atlas. Each program element served a more specific subset of this target group. Our Mobile Market focuses on SNAP, WIC and Senior Farmer's Market Coupon users in Lowell, MA. While age ranges vary, overall at least 50% of the population of our Mobile Market customers are low-income. Many live in low-income or public housing in neighborhoods without a grocery store. We worked Lowell Public Schools supporting 13 existing school gardens, providing in school and afterschool gardening and nutrition education in 4 schools. This audience is mostly middle and elementary school students, with about 60 high school students. While demographics of this population shifted each year, as of the last LPS census, students report the following:8% Black, 28% Asian, 26% White, 34% Latino, and 4% multi-racial. 48% are female and 52% are male. 31% do not have English as their first language, and24% are English Language Learners. 58% are economically disadvantaged, and over 74% are classified as high needs by the Department of Education. We provided Farm to Table cooking and nutrition classes during the period. Most families had students in the Lowell Public School system. Groups included families with children, teens, and adults with chronic disease. We partnered with Lowell Public Schools, the Boys & Girls Club, Lowell General Hospital, UMASS Lowell, and the MassHire for recruitment. Our Community Gardens served over 200 households each year. 73% are extremely low, low, or low-moderate income according to HUD income levels.They are: 28% White, 14% Black, 35% Asian, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 10% mixed race/other. Our Market Garden efforts spanned the last two years of the program. In year 1, we worked with 11 participants, all low-income refugee and immigrant residents of Lowell. In year 2, we did less hands-on work and provided technical assistance serving 3 growers: 2 immigrants, one man and one woman; and one white American woman.? Changes/Problems:In grant year 3, we discontinued our scope of work with the UTEC Community Kitchen as their operation was moving in a different direction from our original intended purposes. We have since established a community focused kitchen in our new facility which will be a space for community members to take classes, test recipes, and share knowledge about nutrition and cooking. UTEC's Kitchen continues to function as an incubator space for local business, as well as a kitchen for small businesses such as food trucks or specialty food producers (such as hot sauce makers). In 2020, our entire leadership team rolled over. Our Co-founders left the day to day operations of the organization. Jessica Wilson, our former Development Director assumed the Executive Director role. Two new team members were hired to fill out our leadership team: Ali Jacobs, Director of Program, and Katherine Davis, Development Director.This team has solidified through the 2020 program year and the challenges presented by COVID-19. Of course, our program was effected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as outlined in the "accomplishments" section, we were able to meet our goals, but with new strategies including online produce sales in place of Mobile Markets, and providing technical assistance to beginning growers rather than carrying out a full-fledged Market Garden program. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Conferences attended: Urban Farming Conference, 2017, 2018 MA Food Systems Collaborative Annual Conference 2016, 17, 18, 19 Winter and Summer Northeast Organic Farming Association Conferences 2016, 17, 18, 19 School Garden Conference, 2018 National Farm to Cafeteria Conference, 2018 Racial equity training: PV Grows Racial Equity in the Food System Working Group training, 2016 People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Racism training, 2019 Photovoice training, led by Catherine Sands of Fertile Ground, 2019 Certifications: All Education Team members are ServSafe Food Handler certified, and 2 staff are OSHA certified. Master Urban Gardener, 4 of our team members earned this certification. Other trainings: Community Organizing training led by the Coalition for a Better Acre, 2020 Leadership Bootcamp, 2019 Core Values training, 2019 How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? An annual report was drafted and distributed to funders and supporters of Mill City Grows in June of each project year. We also publish and disseminate a monthly newsletter, which is delivered electronically to over 1,500 addresses. We are also members of several task forces and working groups throughout Greater Lowell. We update on our progress to members of the Greater Lowell Health Alliance Wellness & Chronic Disease Task Force. We have also been featured in our local newspaper, the Lowell Sun and on local TV, LTC.org. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Objective A: We increased our community gardens program from 5 to 7 gardens through the course of the grant, with an 9thgarden planned for opening in 2021, serving over 200 households. We moved our Farm to School programming from individualized service to 11 schools to overall service to 28 schools including 13 school gardens, in school, afterschool and out of school programming, and integration in the school cafeteria and food culture through working with the Lowell Food and Nutrition Department to help support the Massachusetts Harvest of the Month program. In March 2020 our staff created the School Garden Network Portal, a resources for teachers using school gardens, and made this widely available to LPS teachers and beyond. Objective C: We increased our Urban Farmland from 3 to 6 acres through the grant period. This land is spread over 4 unique sites in the City. as the grant begin we were averaging 25,000 pounds of produce per annual harvest. In 2020, we estimate we will produce over 45,000 pounds of produce from all sources. Objective D: We conducted a pilot of our Market Garden program, including a community led design process, and determinedthere are two distinct needs for immigrant and refugee growers in Lowell: 1) more community growing spaces to pass on agricultural traditions to future generations and share cultural food and 2) space for beginning growers to either begin or expand their business models. In 2021, we will begin to satisfy the first need through our community gardens programming and we will work on supporting the second goal through providing technical assistance, as well as an Urban Farm space in the downtown Lowell area for a limited number of growers. Goal 2: Objective A: We now have staff with proficiency in 2 languages other than English. We have used volunteers to provide interpretation in Spanish, Khmer, Burmese, Swahili, and Portuguese. We have secured funding for live interpretation of classes, as well as translation and currently translate all program flyers and forms into various languages. Objective B: Through the grant period we have delivered over 100 sessions of cooking classes to 580 class attendants.In addition to offering education we also provide 500-800 pounds of free food to attendees each year. We are developing a plan for virtual class deliver starting in fall 2020. Objective C: We have effectively increased participation in our Mobile Market, CSA and Community Gardens programs amongst low-income residents. Over 60% of all Market transactions are from these clients. Also, 73% of our community garden participants are low-income. Objective D: 32 participants took our leadership training course and work as volunteer leaders in our community and school gardens. We have also worked with 190 volunteers through 2020, many of whom assist as project leaders and co-instructors. In 2020, we will work with volunteers to lead cooking workshops on cultural dishes from the many diverse immigrant cultures in Lowell. Goal 3: Objective A: We have successfully increased our Mobile Market stops each year from 2016-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we reduced our stops to 4 per week, so that we could ensure proper sanitizing and health protocols as per our local Department of Health. We increased access through adding an online store, and 4 CSA pick up times, in effect offering 9 food access points through our final year. Objective B: We continue to offer 3 value added product lines (coffee, honey, and dried beans) produced by local companies and available through our Mobile Market.We are now testing recipes (including sofrito, kim chi, pickles, and preserves) for potential manufacture and distribution next year. Objective C: After completion of our Market Garden pilot, we have helped two beginning growers start business by brokering a land partnership, and have helped one grower expand her business through technical assistance. Objective D: As of April 2019, we have moved into a new office space and in March 2020 completed construction on a state of the art kitchen which meets all of our needs, and are no longer working in the UTEC kitchen, freeing up this space for their workforce development programming and rental to entrepreneur programs.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Case study of Mill City Grows Food Is Medicine and other food access work. https://foodismedicinema.org/
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
News article on COVID pivots, 3.19.20, Mill City Grows Continues to operate with limitations by Nicole Defeudis, Lowell Sun
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
The Power of Urban Agriculture in Transforming a Community by Sara Dewey
5.4.2020
www.clf.org
|
Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Five different program elements this period had distinct target audiences. Our Mobile Market focuses on SNAP, WIC and Senior Farmer's Market Coupon users in Lowell, MA, with emphasis on different language communities in Lowell. While age ranges vary, overall at least 60% of the population of our Mobile Market customers are low-income and use SNAP, WIC, or Sr. Coupons to purchase produce or receive donations. Many live in low-income or public housing in neighborhoods in census tracts considered low-income/low-access. This constitutes about 3,063 of the people served. Of those roughly 920 are seniors. We worked Lowell Public Schools supporting 13 existing school gardens, providing in school and afterschool gardening and nutrition education in 4 schools. While schools were closed due to the pandemic, we maintained school gardens and were able to grow produce which was distributed to low-income families in 2 of the schools. Our in school and afterschool students are from urban schools who are low-performing or recently improved performance and are working to keep performance on the rise. This audience is mostly middle and elementary school students, with about 60 high school students. They are racially diverse with the following reported racial identity breakdown:8% Black, 28% Asian, 26% White, 34% Latino, and 4% multi-racial. 48% are female and 52% are male. 31% do not have English as their first language, and24% are English Language Learners. 58% are economically disadvantaged, and over 74% are classified as high needs by the Department of Education. The Lowell Department of Health confirms that 37% of Lowell school children are overweight or obese. This represents nearly 7,000 served. We provided Farm to Table cooking and nutrition classes during the period. We served 58 families with 184 people who are low-income, with about 20% being English Language Learners. Groups included families with children, teens, and adults with chronic diease. We partnered with Lowell Public Schools, the Boys & Girls Club, Lowell General Hospital, UMASS Lowell, and the MassHire for recruitment. Our Community Gardeners served over 200 households over the reporting period. 73% are extremely low, low, or low-moderate income according to HUD income levels.They are: 28% White, 14% Black, 35% Asian, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 10% mixed race/other. We did not continue our Market Garden program in the same fashion as last year, but we did provide technical assistance to beginning growers. We helped 2 growers: one African immigrant male and one white woman, find land. We also worked with one Cambodian woman grower to complete paperwork and establish a farm stand with MA state Phase 3 re-opening protocols. Changes/Problems:In 2020, our entire leadership team rolled over. Our Co-founders left the day to day operations of the organization. Jessica Wilson, our former Development Director assumed the Executive Director role. Two new team members were hired to fill out our leadership team: Ali Jacobs, Director of Program, and Katherine Davis, Development Director.This team has solidified through the 2020 program year and the challenges presented by COVID-19. In mid-March,we received news of the mandatory shutdown due to the pandemic, and began making plans for what this would mean for Mill City Grows. We had some guiding principles for that task including: keep our staff safe and able to continue employment; create as much food access as possible in this new world where food shortages and interruptions in our food system were imminent; maintain community connections; provide support for youth learning at home; and provide our services equitably to Lowell residents. We have evaluated and changed our plans many times, but from the start, we worked with our teams to create protocols, drafted by our staff themselves, to help us continue our essential work while following safety guidelines and keeping our staff safe. While we couldn't work with students in the schools, and decided to halt our in-person summer programs for youth, we have provided some virtual education and have been able to hire a few young people onto our team and have given them meaningful summer experiences, and career experience. More than summer jobs, we want to invest in youth who are interested in this work, and help them develop the skills they need to lead in the future while also providing them with a living wage and benefits, so we have brought some new young workers onto our permanent staff as well. We have developed an extensive crop plan that has allowed us to increase our production. This includes planting fields that were planned to lay fallow, and using soil amendments to bolster the health of the soil and crops. We have created flexible work hours, and work from home capacity for those who are able, and provided additional support to team members caring for children or elders. In some situations, sharing job responsibilities and cross training members of different departments. We have kept our community gardens open with social distancing and sanitizing guidelines, and have moved many of our in-person events to virtual formats. We have called all of our program participants in the gardens and afterschool programs personally to keep in touch and help them with food security. We have also utilized translation servicesto help make our outreach materials accessible to multiple language communities in Lowell. We've done outreach specifically to immigrant, refugee, and elder serving organizations to make sure the most vulnerable members of our community have access to fresh, local food. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our year-round staff participated in trainings during the winter including: 1) People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Racism training; 2) Storytelling training led by Catherine Sands of Fertile Ground; and 3) Community Organizing training led by the Coalition for a Better Acre.Several staff attended the MA Food Systems Collaborative Annual Conference. Staff and participants of our youth and community programs attended Winter and Summer Northeast Organic Farming Association Conferences. All Education Team members are ServSafe Food Handler certified, and 2 staff are OSHA certified. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?An annual report was drafted and distributed to funders and supporters of Mill City Grows in June of 2020. We also publish and disseminate a monthly newsletter, which is delivered electronically to over 1,500 addresses. Updates are given to program participants via community meetings held throughout the year (virtually when needed).We are also members of several task forces and working groups throughout Greater Lowell. We update on our progress to members of the Greater Lowell Health Alliance Wellness & Chronic Disease Task Force. We have also been featured in our local newspaper, the Lowell Sun and on local TV, LTC.org. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our grant is now complete, but future activities to continue the work include: Complete a Community Food Assessment for Lowell to update data from 2011 community food assessment Work with partners to establish a Food Policy Council Establish Food is Medicine programming with our Accountable Care Organization, Wellforce Build an 8thcommunity garden with 16 beds to serve more families in Lowell Complete business plan for our new kitchen space to determine best programming to meet our mission and generate revenue for sustainability Update our website for better external communication
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Objective A: We currently manage 7 community gardens with 199 beds. An eight garden is planned, but building stalled due to COVID-19. Funding has been secured via the City of Lowell Community Development Block grants, and we are currently planning to build in November 2020. This will bring our total garden beds to 215.All gardens remained open during the pandemic with stringent sanitizing and social distancing protocols. Objective B: This year we worked closely with Lowell Food and Nutrition Department to fund and create a scope of work for a Lowell Farm to School Manager, and hired Maggie Nowak to fill this position in 2019. Ms. Nowak develops and implements programming, oversee 13 school gardens, FoodCorps service members, and 1 school Garden Coordinator, delivers professional development to Lowell Public School staff and faculty, and partners with the cafeteria staff to oversee Harvest of the Month programming and procure more local food to be used in cafeteria lunches. Through the pandemic shutdown, Ms. Nowak worked alongside school staff to administer emergency food distribution to Lowell students and families. In March, she completed the School Garden Network Portal, a resources for teachers using school gardens, and made this widely available to LPS teachers and beyond. Objective C: We are currently farming on over 6 acres of land in Lowell across 3 sites (2 are active this year, with 1 fallow, and one inaccessible due to pandemic). Despite not being able to access these two plots, we have done more strategic crop planning, and increased our production by 50% over last year, producing 43,384 pounds over the past 12 months. Objective D: After last year's Market Garden pilot we decided to do more exploration before a full roll out of the program. This year, we provided technical assistance to women growers and growers of color in and around Lowell. We helped place 2 growers with landowners to begin their businesses, and helped an established Cambodian woman grower to complete necessary paperwork to open a farm stand during the state's Phase 3 reopening. This has helped to create income for 3 small businesses and help to establish 2 beginning growers. Goal 2: Objective A: We employ 3 Spanish speakers and 1 Khmer speaker on our year-round staff to ensure interpretation is available in our office environment. We also translate all of our Mobile Market materials into Spanish, Khmer, Lao, Portuguese, and Arabic. Our outreach materials are available in Spanish, Khmer and Burmese. When in person programming commences, we have secured funding for live interpretation. Objective B: Our Farm to Table (F2T) cooking classes are in their fourth year of program implementation and this year we trained 184 people who attended these sessions in seasonal and scratch cooking. Over 500 pounds of produce were distributed to students, and at least 60% of students enrolled in 5 class series attended the entire workshop. While classes were discontinued during the shutdown phase of the pandemic, we produced 3 cooking videos for children and families, and will introduce virtual cooking classes in October 2020. Objective C: We continue to have high participation from SNAP/WIC/Sr. Coupon clients in our Mobile Market program due to our outreach and education efforts. Over 60% of all Market transactions are from these clients. Also, 73% of our community garden participants are low-income. Objective D: In addition to our 22 garden leaders from 2019, we trained an additional 12 leaders in 2020. We have also worked with 190 volunteers through 2020, many of whom assist as project leaders and co-instructors. In 2020, we will work with volunteers to lead cooking workshops on cultural dishes from the many diverse immigrant cultures in Lowell. Goal 3: Objective A: In 2019, our Mobile Market visited 10 stops per week. In 2020, we have 4 weekly stops, as well as a CSA, limited delivery to quarantining households, and online ordering. While the number of stops has decreased, we are ensuring safe transactions by following COVID-19 protocols, and no-contact access via online orders. Objective B: We continue to offer 3 value added product lines (coffee, honey, and dried beans) produced by local companies and available through our Mobile Market.We are now testing recipes (including sofrito, kim chi, pickles, and preserves) for potential manufacture and distributon next year. Objective C: As discussed above, we have helped two beginning growers start business by brokering a land partnership, and have helped one grower expand her business through technical assistance. Objective D: As of April 2019, we have moved into a new office space and in March 2020 completed construction on a state of the art kitchen which meets all of our needs, and are no longer working in the UTEC kitchen, freeing up this space for their workforce development programming and rental to entrepreneur programs.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Case study of Mill City Grows Food Is Medicine and other food access work. https://foodismedicinema.org/
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
"Mill City Grows Continues to operate with limitations by Nicole Defeudis, Lowell Sun, 3.19.2020
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
The Power of Urban Agriculture in Transforming a Community by Sara Dewey
5.4.2020
www.clf.org
|
Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:Five different program elements this period had distinct target audiences. Our Mobile Market focuses on SNAP, WIC and Senior Farmer's Market Coupon users in Lowell, MA. While age ranges vary, overall at least 53% of the population of our Mobile Market customers are low-income and use SNAP, WIC, or Sr. Coupons to purchase produce. Many live in low-income or public housing in neighborhoods in census tracts considered low-income/low-access. This constitutes about 6,300 of the people served. Of those roughly 1,200 are seniors. We worked Lowell Public Schools supporting 13 existing school gardens and supporting 1 school in the planning process for creating a school garden for special needs students. We also work with 5 specific schools to provide in school and afterschool gardening and nutrition education. Our in school and afterschool students are from urban schools who are low-performing or recently improved performance and are working to keep performance on the rise. This audience is mostly middle and elementary school students, with about 60 high school students. They are racially diverse with the following reported racial identity breakdown:8% Black, 29% Asian, 26% White, 33% Latino, and 4% multi-racial. 48% are female and 52% are male. 29% do not have English as their first language, and24% are English Language Learners. 54% are economically disadvantaged, and over 72% are classified as high needs by the Department of Education. The Lowell Department of Health confirms that 37% of Lowell school children are overweight or obese. This represents nearly 7,000 served. We provided Farm to Table cooking and nutrition classes during the period. We served 32 families with 119 people who are low-income, with about 20% being English Language Learners. All were families with school aged children, with one class delivered specifically to teens. Our Community Gardeners served over 700 gardeners over the reporting period. 73% are extremely low, low, or low-moderate income according to HUD income levels.They are: 28% White, 14% Black, 35% Asian, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 10% mixed race/other. We also began our Market Garden pilot program this year. Our target audience for this program is low-income refugee and immigrant residents of Lowell interested in growing on a larger scale to sell or share produce in their ethnic communities and beyond. We are currently working with 11 gardeners, 1 as our test gardener, and 10 on our Community Advisory Board, working on a participatory design process for the roll out of this program next year. Changes/Problems:In 2019-2020, our leadership team is transitioning. Our Co-Founders, Lydia Sisson Director of Programs, and Francey Slater, Executive Director, will be retiring from their respective positions in 2019. Our current Director of Development, Jessica Wilson, has been promoted to Deputy Director, and will assume the role of Executive Director in 2020. Ms. Wilson was a founding Board member of Mill City Grows, and served as our inaugural Board President. She has served on the Mill City Grows staff for 3.5 years.She will work with Ms. Slater and Ms. Sisson through June 2020 to fully transition these roles. In addition, we are in the process of hiring a new Director of Programs.We expect this role will be hired by end of year 2019. Ms. Sisson and Ms. Slater will continue to work part-time with Mill City Grows to facilitate this transition and to on-board the new Director of Programs. We are confident that given the time and planning that we have put into this transition, and the experience of all involved that this will be a smooth transition, and that Mill City Grows will continue to thrive through and after this change in leadership. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our year-round staff participated in 3 trainings during the winter: 1) a Leadership Bootcamp led by Kimberly Paterson of CIM; 2) Core Values training led by Louisa French; and 3) Storytelling training led by Catherine Sands of Fertile Ground. Our entire staff and Board of Directors participated in the New England Food Systems 21-day Racial Equity Challenge, doing readings and research on systemic oppression, as well as hosting in person meetings and discussions. Several staff attended the MA Food Systems Collaborative Annual Conference. Staff and participants of our youth and community programs attended Winter and Summer Northeast Organic Farming Association Conferences. Our newest Education Team member is now ServSafe Food Handler certified, and also attended the Food Project's Summer Institute, a youth development focused workshop for food justice programs. Our FoodCorps members attended and received Master Urban Gardener certification through the Trustees Boston Community Gardens program. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?An annual report was drafted and distributed to funders and supporters of Mill City Grows in June of 2019. We also publish and disseminate a monthly newsletter, which is delivered electronically to over 1,500 addresses. Updates are given to program participants via community meetings held throughout the year. We are also members of several task forces and working groups throughout Greater Lowell. We update on our progress to members of the Greater Lowell Health Alliance Healthy Eating & Living Task Force. We have also been featured in our local newspaper, the Lowell Sun, and on local TV, LTC.org. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the coming reporting period, we will begin work on our 2021-2023 strategic plan, which will inform how we grow or alter our existing programs to meet community needs. Rather than building a new community garden, we have taken funds raised this year to conduct maintenance and upgrades on our existing gardens. Should we endeavor to build a new community garden, we want this to be done hand in hand with community leaders in their neighborhoods. We have increased our growing space on our Urban Farms, and continue to invest in infrastructure through centralizing our storage and wash-pack facilities. We currently have an outdoor cooler at our office headquarters, and are in the process of building an indoor kitchen which will provide sanitary space for washing and packing produce. We will also test preservation of local produce, with the intention of making frozen/preserved local produce available year-round. These products will be SNAP eligible so we can continue to best serve our target customers. We have worked with LPS on a proposal for how we can best serve them, and have secured funding to hire and deploy a Farm to School Manager, who will be our liaison with the public school system to oversee and deliver Farm to School programming. We are also building an online portal that will serve as a resource for School Garden Leadership Teams as they maintain their gardens and use them for curriculum support throughout the school year. In 2020 we will roll out a full Market Garden program, engaging up to 6 refugee and immigrant growers, growing and selling culturally relevant crops. Our current focus is on finding appropriate land for the program and engaging the community in our program plan.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Objective A: We currently manage 7 community gardens with 199 beds, and have focused energy this year on a robust maintenance project across all of our gardens ensuring all beds are fully repaired. We have also added seating, storage, composting facilities, and perennial beds at some gardens, increasing opportunities for existing gardeners to grow in different ways. Objective B: This year we continued to support 13 school gardens and provide at depth garden and nutrition training (8+ hours per week) at 4 schools. We also provided afterschool education at 3 schools. We are currently developing a School Garden Resource portal for teachers within the Lowell Public Schools. As a result of some research we did with schools over the past year, we discovered they were most interested in assistance in promoting the MA Harvest of the Month program, and maintaining garden beds. To that end, we have established 2 new roles in this program; School Gardens Coordinator and Farm to School Manager. These positions will oversee school garden maintenance and education as well as Farm to School activities in classrooms and the cafeteria across Lowell. Objective C: We expanded our Urban Farms from 3 to 4 locations. Our newest location is a rooftop farm at UMass Lowell. We are now growing over 5+ acres, and we harvested 27,632 pounds of produce through the reporting period (an increase of nearly 5,000 pounds from last year). Objective D: We are just wrapping up our Market Garden pilot program. Our test gardener had a small plot at one of our Urban Farms, and did education at our Mobile Markets about traditional Mexican crops that he grew. Our Community Advisor Board has developed a plan for a full roll out of the program, and will present their findings in late September 2019. Goal 2: Objective A: We employ 3 Spanish speakers on our year-round staff to ensure interpretation is available in our office environment. We also translate all of our Mobile Market materials into Spanish and Khmer. Our outreach materials are available in Spanish, Khmer and Burmese. We are working to find funding to translate all of our education materials for gardener training, and to provide live interpretation at Mobile Markets throughout the growing season. Objective B: Our Farm to Table (F2T) cooking classes are in their third year of program implementation and this year we trained 119 people who attended these sessions in seasonal and scratch cooking. Over 500 pounds of produce were distributed to students, and at least 60% of students enrolled in 5 class series attended the entire workshop. Objective C: We continue to have high participation from SNAP/WIC/Sr. Coupon clients in our Mobile Market program due to our outreach and education efforts. Over 50% of all Market transactions are from these clients. Also, 73% of our community garden participants are low-income. Objective D: We have trained and work with over 22 Community and School garden leaders at each of our garden locations. These volunteers are overseeing team meetings, opening meetings, volunteer days and other projects throughout the growing season. We have also had guest chefs teach our Farm to Table classes - these are other parents who have gone through the class and want to share their cooking techniques and cultural traditions with the community. Goal 3: Objective A: This year the Mobile Market has increased to 11 stops, which include 8 weekly and 3 monthly stops. Objective B: We continue to offer 4 value added product lines (coffee, preserves, honey, and dried beans) produced by local companies and available through our Mobile Market. Objective C: We are now building out the program plan for the Market Garden Program which includes curriculum, schedule, and anticipated outcomes. The pilot program allowed for one test gardener to conduct the program, and earn revenue through growing traditional Mexican crops. Objective D: We currently use the UTEC Community Kitchen to prep taste test samples for our Harvest of the Month Taste tests at Lowell Public Schools as part of our Farm to School programing. We also utilized the space to teach a Farm to Table cooking class. As of April 2019, we have moved into a new office space and are building a kitchen there which will help to meet our needs more specifically in the future.
Publications
|
Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Four different program elements this period had distinct target audiences. Our Mobile Market focuses on SNAP, WIC and Senior Farmer's Market Coupon users in Lowell, MA. While age ranges vary, overall at least 50% of the population of our Mobile Market customers are low-income. Many live in low-income or public housing in neighborhoods without a full service grocery store. This constitutes about 6,000 of the people served. Of those roughly 1,400 are seniors. We worked Lowell Public Schools supporting 14 school gardens and providing in school and afterschool gardening and nutrition education. Our in school and afterschool students are from urban schools who are low-performing or recently improved performance and are working to keep performance on the rise. This audience is mostly middle and elementary school students, with about 60 high school students. They are racially diverse with the following reported racial identity breakdown:7% Black, 29% Asian, 29% White, 31% Latino, and 4% multi-racial. 48% are female and 52% are male.25% are English Language Learners or do not speak English as their first language. 56% are economically disadvantaged, and over 70% are classified as high needs by the Department of Education. The Lowell Department of Health confirms that 37% of Lowell school children are overweight or obese. This represents 8,000 served. We provided Farm to Table cooking and nutrition classes during the period. We served 44 families with 161 people who are low-income, with about 20% being English Language Learners. All were families with children, some are adoptive or foster parents. Our Community Gardeners served 607 gardeners over the reporting period.73% are extremely low, low, or low-moderate income according to HUD income levels.They are: 28% White, 14% Black, 35% Asian, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 10% mixed race/other.? Changes/Problems:As our education programs have become so successful, over the past year we promoted our Director of Education to Director of Programs, and hired someone to take on the role of Youth Education Program Manager. We also experimented with hiring part-time staff to help us coordinate our afterschool programs, but have decided to eliminate these positions after the one year trial. Our first Food Educator also left Mill City Grows to pursue a great opportunity in the Boston Public Schools system. After a brief period with no one filling the position, we have hired one of our graduating FoodCorps members, Giuliana Cappucci, to take on the role. She has been serving at MCG for 2 years and so has lots of great experience to hit the ground running and make the role her own. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The entire staff participated in a teamwork training in July 2018, that served to help us better understand our teammates work styles as well as our own and come up with ways we can better communicate with each other for more efficient and successful outcomes. Our staff had the opportunity to attend several conferences and share information about our program as well as learn from others experiences. These include: the Urban Farming Conference where three of our programs presented on our models: farm, mobile market, and education; the School Garden Conference; the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference; and the Winter and Summer Northeast Organic Farming Association Conference. Our Garden staff also attended Facilitation Training, Master Urban Gardener certification, and two local leadership development courses, Mill Cities Leadership Institute and Public Matters. Our Education team also received training from the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association and were ServSafe Food Handler certified. Our Farm Team attended a Fruit and Vegetable Conference, a soil building class, and a marketing class for Farmers at the University of New Hampshire. Our Director of Operations also presented at the Sustainable Communities and Campuses Conference about our partnership with UMASS Lowell and the Urban Agriculture Greenhouse we built in partnership with the University on their campus. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?An annual report was drafted and distributed to funders and supporters of Mill City Grows in May of 2018. We also publish and disseminate a monthly newsletter, which is delivered electronically to over 1,500 addresses. Updates are given to program participants via community meetings held throughout the year. We are also members of several task forces and working groups throughout Greater Lowell. We update on our progress to members of the Greater Lowell Health Alliance Healthy Eating & Living Task Force. We have also been featured in our local newspaper, the Lowell Sun, and on BBC World Service radio. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the coming reporting period, we will complete fundraising and planning for one new community garden, increasing our beds to 230 or more. The installation of this garden may take place in the next year or the year after. We will also begin conversations with local organizations on the best ways to support creation and maintenance of community gardens for their participants. We will install a mobile cooler and wash-pack station at our farm (funding is currently pending for this project) to maximize our efficiency and comply with Food Safety Modernization Act guidelines. We will create a proposal for a service contract with Lowell Public Schools to help us structure our relationship with them going forward, and ensure the sustainability of our school garden and nutrition education program. One potential solution is creating a "School Garden Learning Network" that would provide professional development and support for teachers in all subjects and for all age levels as they increase their use of the school garden in their classroom. We will continue to vision and strategize our plans for the Market Garden Program. We have a timeline, which starts our pilot in 2020. Our current focus is on finding appropriate land for the program and building out the program model.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Objective A: We have increased the number of Community Gardens we manage in Lowell from six to seven, so we are now able to serve 30 more families. We plan to add at least one more garden in the next 2 years. Objective B: This year we continued to support 14 school gardens and provide at depth garden and nutrition training (8+ hours per week) at 4 schools. We also provided afterschool education at 6 schools. We are planning to grow our involvement in the coming year through the development of a School Garden Network with the Lowell Public Schools and are in process of developing an ROI report for the schools as well as a contract proposal for future years. Objective C: Our Urban Farm has expanded to 5 acres, after adding a third site which includes a greenhouse, in fall 2017. We harvested 23,946 pounds of produce through the reporting period. Objective D: Planning and strategizing for the Market Garden program has begun, and we are evaluating sites for the program to pilot. Goal 2: Objective A: We employ 2 Spanish speakers, 1 Khmer speaker, and 1 Arabic speaker on our year-round staff to ensure interpretation is available in our office environment. We employ one summer Mobile Market Assistant who is fluent in Khmer. We also translate all of our Mobile Market materials into Spanish, Arabic and Khmer. We are working to find funding to translate all of our education materials for gardener training. Objective B: Our Farm to Table (F2T) cooking classes are in their second year of program implementation and this year we trained 161 people who attended these sessions in seasonal and scratch cooking. Over 700 pounds of produce were distributed to students, and at least 60% of students enrolled in 5 class series attended the entire workshop. Objective C: We continue to have high participation from SNAP/WIC/Sr. Coupon clients in our Mobile Market program due to our outreach and education efforts. Over 60% of all Market transactions are from these clients. Also, 73% of our community garden participants are low-income. Objective D:Resident gardeners were able to share their knowledge about urban gardening through 21 skill shares led at our community gardens by our garden volunteers. Topics included: composting, weeding, DIY flood irrigation, pest management, aerating water, and trellising. 129 people attended these skill share trainings. Goal 3: Objective A: This year the Mobile Market has increased to 11 weekly stops. Objective B: We continue to offer 5 value added product lines (coffee, pickles, jam, honey, and dried beans) and are piloting a CSA share program, and focusing efforts this year on developing the program plan to start up our Market Gardener program, with the intention that we will have new product lines to offer in the coming years as these microenterprises get up and running. Objective C: We are now building out the program plan for the Market Garden Program which will include curriculum needs (writing and developing curriculum and solidifying partnerships for recruitment and curriculum delivery) for the Market Garden training program, making plans for location and seeking additional funds to support the pilot program. Objective D: UTEC's Community Kitchen completed construction and received a certificate of occupancy in August of 2017. We have since used the space for both our education and farm programs. Space usage for our education programs includes teaching Farm to Table cooking classes, processing large amounts of school garden produce for school wide taste tests, and product development training for our summer youth employment program, J-Squad, who developed their own salsa recipe. J-Squad produced enough salsa using our farms' produce to give salsa to their families and our J-Squad project partners. The recipe was documented and can be produced in larger batches in the future. We used UTEC's kitchen space for our farm program through the processing of large amounts of our fresh produce to store for the winter. We continue to work with partners to create a usage plan for the space and see where UTEC's workforce development program can assist in food processing for small entrepreneurs.
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Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:Three different program elements this period had distinct target audiences. Our Mobile Market focuses on SNAP, WIC and Senior Farmer's Market Coupon users in Lowell, MA. While age ranges vary, the population is low-income. Many live in low-income or public housing in neighborhoods without a full service grocery store. This constitutes about 3,000 of the people served. We worked with two schools to install school gardens, and continued providing support and education in 12 other Lowell Public Schools. These are urban schools who are low-performing or recently improved performance and are working to keep performance on the rise. This audience is middle and elementary school students. They are racially diverse with the following reported racial identity breakdown: Asian: 29.1%; Latino(a): 30.7%; Black 7.3%; White 52%; Multi-racial: 3.6%. This represents 8,000 served. Over 75% of Lowell school children are eligible for free or reduced lunch, but all children now receive this benefit due to the Community Eligibility Provision. Finally, we provided Farm to Table cooking and nutrition classes during the period. We served 116 people who are low-income, with about 20% being English Language Learners. All were families with children. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our Operations Manager attended the Urban Agriculture conference in New York City. Also, we provided training on racism in the food system for our entire staff in July of 2017. The training was delivered by members of the PV Grows Racial Equity in the Food System Working Group. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?An annual report was drafted and distributed to funders and supporters of Mill City Grows. We also publish and disseminate a monthly newsletter, which is delivered electronically to over 1500 addresses. Updates are given to program participant via community meetings held throughout the year. We are also members of several task forces and working groups throughout Greater Lowell. We update on our progress to members of the Greater Lowell Health Alliance Healthy Eating & Living Task Force. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the coming reporting period, we will build 2 new community gardens bringing our total beds to 204. We will also complete construction on a greenhouse built in partnership with UMASS Lowell. This will allow us to expand our winter production and increase supply for our Mobile Market. Due to the success of our School Garden Program, we will hire a School Garden Program Coordinator in the coming period. This is a brand new position. Funding has been secured, and a job description written. With this increased capacity we plan to bring at least 1 new school garden online in the coming period. We will continue to vision and strategize our plans for the market Gardens. We have a timeline, which starts our pilot in 2020. Our current focus is on finding appropriate land for the program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Objective A: We have increased the number of Community Gardens we manage in Lowell from five to six, so we are now able to serve 30 more families. We are in process of adding a 7th garden in the coming year. Objective B: We have increased our Farm to School activity by expanding programming from 11 to 14 schools during the program period. We will continue to serve these schools in the coming year, and are working on a location for our 15th garden. During the year we conducted gardening and nutrition classes at all 14 schools, with at-depth training (8+ hours per week) at 4 of the schools. We also provided professional development in school garden usage for teachers at all schools, and worked closely with Food Services to support their Harvest of the Month food program in our nutrition classes. Harvest of the Month ensures that 1 local produce, dairy or meat item is highlighted in the menu throughout the month. Objective C: Our Urban Farm has expanded to 4 acres, and will add a third site, including a greenhouse, this fall, which will bring our productive area to 5 acres. We harvested 25,000 pounds by the end of 2016, and are aiming to harvest 30,000 pounds through the end of this growing season, with a dramatic future increase to 40,000 pounds per year with the introduction of the greenhouse. Objective D: Planning and strategizing for the Market Garden program has begin, and we are evaluating sites for the program to pilot. Goal 2: Objective A: Hired 2 Spanish speakers and 1 Khmer speaker on our staff to ensure Spanish and Khmer interpretation available in our office environment. Our Gardener Training Program hosted one session with Khmer interpretation. Our Farm to Table cooking class had several multi-language sessions. Two five-part series classes offered interpretation in Khmer and Somali. Three one time classes offered interpretation in Swahili, Portuguese, and Spanish. Objective B: Our Farm to Table (F2T) cooking classes were created and a year of classes was delivered. 116 people attended 34 total sessions. 750 pounds of produce were distributed to students, and at least 60% of students enrolled in 5 class series attended the entire workshop. Objective C: We hosted three outreach events throughout the year, aimed at educating low-income residents on our programs as well as newly available Healthy Incentive Program (HIP) benefits. Through these benefits, SNAP/WIC/Sr. Coupon users are entitled to $40 reimbursement on the purchase of produce from farmer's markets/Mobile markets. As a result, we have seen an increase from 20% to 50% of our Mobile Market transactions attributed to food subsidy users. Also, 70% of our community garden participants are low-income. Objective D: Resident gardeners were able to share their knowledge about urban gardening through several different mechanisms. Four of our gardeners led formal workshops or skill share sessions attended by other garden program participants and community members at large. Twenty-one gardeners were able to share their knowledge and experiences at more informal Q&A sessions held as part of our Gardener Training Program. Goal 3: Objective A: This year the Mobile Market has increased to 10 weekly stops (last year we accomplished 9 weekly stops) Objective B: This year we have established 3 value-added product lines through a number of partnerships. These include, pickles made by UTEC (a local non-profit) using MCG's produce; coffee raised sustainably by Café Solar and roasted by Rosie's Café, a local coffee shop; jams produce by a small family-owned business, R.E. Kimball Inc. located in Amesbury, MA. Objective C: We are in the strategic planning phase for this objective, looking for land for Market Gardens through partnerships in the Greater Lowell area. Objective D: UTEC's Community Kitchen completed construction and received a certificate of occupancy in August of 2017. We are currently meeting monthly with three partners: UTEC, the City of Lowell Economic Development Office, and E for All to create a usage plan for the space.
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