Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audiences reached by our efforts include low-income residents of Worcester, Webster, and Southbridge. More specifically, our YouthGROW program participants were 100% low income members of the Main South and Bell Hill communities.YouthGROW participant selection prioritizes disconnected youth, including youth who are homeless, involved in the court system, or in foster care. Many participants are also recent immigrants. Our community and school gardens network served a diverse constituency, including over 2,800 students at Worcester Public Schools, 76% of whom are economically disadvantaged, or low income, 30% of whom identify as English Language Learners and 58% identify as having a first language other than English. The majority of Worcester Public students identify as persons of color (74%), 21% are classified as students with disabilities, and 82% classify as students with High Needs. The overwhelming majority of customers served by REC Community Farmers Markets are low-income, as evidenced by sales data from 2023 which showed 94% of purchases across all markets were made with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps,) WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program,) and Senior Coupons. Our customer base is linguistically diverse and includes many recent immigrants. Common languages spoken at market include Arabic, Albanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish. Our Mobile Farmers Market program also serves a high percentage of seniors with limited ability to travel to traditional farmers markets. Changes/Problems:There have been no significant changes in our approach during this year, however there were two significant changes in our previous report, which we have included below. In 2022, as we celebrated our organization's 50th anniversary, we launched our first capital campaign in our history. This campaign includes purchasing the land on which our YouthGROW Urban Farm is located (we have had an agreement with the current property owner to use the space since 2006) as well as significant investment in the site, including the reconstruction of our existing high tunnel to be replaced by a glass and steel greenhouse. As such, we have delayed making any significant investment in our current outdoor classroom space in order to do this in conjunction with the larger construction that will be taking place at the site. As mentioned above, this has not impacted our ability to meet our programmatic goals. We have been able to utilize our existing outdoor spaces, new office space, and adjacent space from a neighboring community partner to host workshops, field trips, and other programs. An additional shift has been prioritizing our focus on support for farm producers rather than sourcing for the Healthy Retail Pilot. The Worcester Food Policy Council, which supported this initial pilot, has shifted to work with the existing restaurant partners to pilot more culturally relevant summer meals through the Summer Eats program. REC has been supporting this project as a Council member but it has not been feasible at this stage to develop sourcing from urban farms for this project, as restaurants and community partners are still establishing menus that will meet the cultural and nutritional needs of the youth served by these sites. As such, we have focused on direct sourcing to restaurants as well as increasing avenues for the purchase of product from urban farm producers to alternative distribution methods, such as the LFPA food pantry donation program. Fortunately, we have seen dramatic growth in our Mobile Markets during this time period, which provides an additional outlet for increased local food purchase and sale. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff have sought out professional development through conferences and trainings in order to gain the technical skills to push project elements forward. Staff attended/presented at the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society COnference (presented on native plantings and pollinators in partnership with Worcester Native Plant Initiative,) Massachusetts Commercial Urban Farm Symposium (presented on best practices for Mobile Farmers MArkets,) attended the MAss Farmers MArket Annual Conference, the National School Gardens Conference, and the Massachusetts FArm to Sea to School conference. A variety of staff participated in all workshop trainings offered by outside facilitators offered through our UGROW Workshop series. Our School Gardens Coordinator participated in a year long Massachusetts Farm to School Institute training as a coach. Our YouthGROW Coordinator completed her Masters in Social Work this spring and ended her role and we welcomed Vanessa Calixto to our staff. Vanessa is currently participating in a class at Harvard School of Public Health working to design an anti violence public health intervention centered on youth. All of these experiences have provided rich resources and connections to bring back to their work as program leaders. Over the past year, we have been active members of the Worcester Together Emergency Food Working Group, now Mayor's Food Security Task Force, the Worcester Food Policy Council, the Central MA SNAP Coalition, the Central MA Youth Jobs Coalition, the I Have a Future youth coalition, the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester, and the Massachusetts State Food Policy Council Advisory Committee. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?REC has shared program results through a variety of channels, including formal reports, e-newsletters, and community events. Highlights from these reports are presented at the REC's Annual Meeting and spring fundraisers, which engage board members and partners committed to REC's mission. Between September 2023 and August 2024, our Instagram audience grew by over 20%, from 1,790 to 2,157 followers. For email marketing, in addition to our monthly newsletter, we send customized updates, such as market news to Farmers Market customers, volunteer and workshop information to volunteers, and event invitations to past attendees. This year, we prioritized building relationships with local press and media outlets, resulting in a total of 32 news stories covering REC's programs, events, and advocacy efforts. During our summer YouthGROW program, we collaborated with Unity Radio Worcester 97.9 on a podcast that showcased YouthGROW participants' experiences. We actively connect with program participants to gather impactful stories, which we share through our annual report, end-of-year appeal, and social media posts to highlight the community's voices and experiences. Additionally, we maintain a strong social media presence, sharing resources and promoting program events to the community. During the reporting period, we ran 10 paid social media ads, spotlighting various REC initiatives and educating the community about SNAP/HIP. Print advertising, multilingual large-format banners and signage, printed outreach materials, and community organizing are all essential components of our outreach strategy. Our Farmers Market team continues to partner with the Latino Education Institute and our local Division of Public Health to coordinate outreach strategies promoting the Mobile Farmers Market and the Healthy Incentives Program to the Latinx community in Worcester. Additionally, the REC Director of Programs serves on the steering committee for a number of public health and food security related coalitions described above and regularly provides data on our program impacts for larger scale community reports, including our Community Health Improvement Plan. As we enter Year Four of our grant, we will begin our second Net Mapping analysis, under the guidance of Dr. Laurie Ross of Clark University. Net Mapping evaluation involved developing participant created maps of the local food system and analyzing the flow of resources and power as they experience it. Our Program Evaluator was able to lead mapping sessions with staff, YouthGROW participants, Community Garden leaders, and Farmers Market customers, and share back map results with all participants and our staff and board in the second year of our grant. We anticipate sharing the results of this evaluation process more broadly after the second cycle of mapping is completed, towards the beginning of Year 4. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have been able to utilize our project work plan to guide our activities for this project and will continue to use this as a roadmap to guide our Year Four work. Key Year Four indicators of success will include continuing the growth of our community workshop offerings, creating and supporting a longer term YouthGROW alumni staff role supporting UGROW Community and School gardens workshops, continuing to increase tours and other uses of the YouthGROW Farm as a community gathering space, and continuing to adapt strategies and structures for leadership in the Community Gardens Program. We anticipate the need to be flexible in our goals around sourcing cultural crops from small and BIPOC farmers due to climate related weather patterns and will continue to seek additional resources to be able to meet these farmers' needs. As described in the section below, our capital campaign project has shifted the timeline for changes to our urban farm space, including planned improvements to our outdoor classroom, but we do not anticipate this will impact our programmatic goals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Build capacity for community leadership in the local food system with explicit opportunities to uplift the voices and perspectives of youth, SNAP/HIP consumers, and urban gardeners in decision-making As we enter the final year of our grant, we are engaging in a second Net Map analysis, in partnership with Clark University, which will engage all of the stakeholders described below. We welcomed back five returning CAB members from 2023, one of our 2022 members, and a new CAB representative from our Autumn Woods Mobile Market locations. We continued to focus on representative leadership by Mobile Market site and developed a calendar of meeting topics for our group as we worked together over the year, which included how to successfully conduct customer surveying, SNAP and HIP advocacy, and participating in our net map analysis project. Language equity in our evaluation and at market remains a key focus and we were excited to welcome Wijdan, one of our community interpreters at market, to this group.This was our second year implementing the leadership of CAB members in our customer survey collection process. Collecting surveys through Survey Monkey, we offered the survey in 8 languages. This year, we added Polish as an additional language. CAB members did a group training on our evaluation tool and process and were the primary survey collectors. We exceeded last year's survey collection (238) with a total of 249 surveys collected and are in the process of analyzing the results with CAB members and staff. We were able to exceed our goal of supporting two YouthGROW alumni in adult staff roles during the reporting period with a total of three alumni on our staff team. Owen Chase, continued to support the YouthGROW farm operations as well as growing his own micro farming business, Just For Fun Farms. This year, Owen was able to vend at all three REC Farmers Markets and is currently exploring opportunities to sell throughout online marketplace. Teddy Mitchell continued to support our Mobile Market staff team and this summer, we were thrilled to fill our open office manager position with recent YouthGROW alumni, Kimora Scott. Kimora had previously supported School Gardens programming through this grant part time and is now here at REC 30 hours a week in an unsubsidized staff role. We are also grateful for the continued service of two YouthGROW alumni on our Board of Directors. We have been working to adapt our planned approach for the UGROW Peer Leadership Cohort based on logistical challenges last year managing varied scheduled and needs of our gardeners. This summer, we worked with volunteer garden coordinators to host Garden Conversations at 4 large community garden locations and found this format to be more accessible for broader participation. We hosted an open house event in the spring of 2024 and plan to incorporate this into the 2025 season again, as well as adding a winter gathering. We continued to offer stipends for pre-k teachers, parents, and community members to support summer school garden maintenance, based on positive feedback from the previous year. Our School Gardens Coordinator was able to successfully support a team of teachers, administrators, and school nutrition staff to apply and be accepted for the year long Farm to School Institute over the summer, as well as identify outside funding so the school could participate in this leadership development opportunity free of charge. We are excited to see what ideas and plans come out of this year-long leadership training process. Create a hub for community-driven urban agriculture education and training efforts in the city of Worcester at our existing YouthGROW urban farm site to share and promote best practices for food production in low-income urban communities. The Fall 2023 series of workshops offered eight opportunities to gather and learn: UGROW Harvest Celebration and Seed Swap, Seed Saving at the Webster Housing Authority and again at the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge, two sessions of The Importance of Native Plants at the Jacob Edwards Library, Habitat-Friendly Fall Cleanup, Growing Microgreens, and Seeds and Cider with the Worcester Native Plant Initiative. Our Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 series including the following: Bokashi Composting with NOFA Mass Growing Healthy Plants from Start to Finish at Colony Retirement Homes Caring for Fruit Trees Seed Starting 101 Cyanotyping Painting Garden Rocks with the Worcester Senior Center Memory Cafe (a gathering space for seniors with dementia) Vegetable Gardening 101 + Soil Health by the Massachusetts Master Gardeners Assoc.(MMGA) Chickens in the Garden with MMGA Seed Saving with MMGA Companion Planting with MMGA Planting Garlic at the Worcester Senior Center These workshops presented opportunities for participants to build connections with fellow members of the local food system and to learn ways to promote their own health and wellness. In addition to on farm workshops and tours, our UGROW staff team delivered 204 school based workshops, garden plantings, and Mobile Market visits, serving over 2,651 Worcester Public School students during the reporting period. We were able to host 559 Worcester Public School students on the YouthGROW Farm Campus this spring. In the summer months, we partnered with UMass Extension School of Agriculture to participate in a farm mentorship program where UMass extension educators visited our farm to help us implement innovative practices for a thriving, sustainable farm. This partnership allowed us to creatively tackle pests without using pesticides, keeping our crops healthy and resilient.The program recently culminated in an event where we discussed pest management strategies and shared valuable tips on preparing farms and gardens for the next growing season. Strengthen the local food economy by increasing opportunities for the purchase and sale of local produce through the Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) and by investing in and supporting BIPOC and New American entrepreneurial projects. We were able to offer Mobile Markets at 18 weekly locations during the summer and fall months, exceeding our planned target of 10. In winter we visited 11 different markets, two in Webster and one in Southbridge. We hosted standing farmers markets 3 days/week June-October and supported 12 farmers and local food producers. 94% of all transactions made through our Mobile Markets were made with SNAP or FMNP coupons, a strong indicator that we are meeting our target population. We have worked with World Farmers to support three of their farmer participants to vend directly at our markets, offering culturally relevant produce from their countries of origin. We have also continued our wholesale purchasing relationship for our Mobile Markets to be able to purchase culturally relevant crops.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audiences reached by our efforts include low-income residents of Worcester, Webster, and Southbridge. More specifically, our YouthGROW program participants were 100% low income members of the Main South and Bell Hill communities.YouthGROW participant selection prioritizes disconnected youth, including youth who are homeless, involved in the court system, or in foster care. Many participants are also recent immigrants. Our community and school gardens network served a diverse constituency, including over 2,000 students at Worcester Public Schools, 64% of whom are economically disadvantaged, or low income, 30% of whom identify as English Language Learners and 55% identify as having a first language other than English. The majority of Worcester Public students identify as persons of color (71%), 21% are classified as students with disabilities, and 81% classify as students with High Needs. The overwhelming majority of customers served by REC Community Farmers Markets are low-income, as evidenced by sales data from 2022 which showed 94% of purchases across all markets were made with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps,) WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program,) and Senior Coupons. Our customer base is linguistically diverse and includes many recent immigrants. Common languages spoken at market include Arabic, Albanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish. We also serve a high percentage of seniors with limited ability to travel to traditional farmers markets through our Mobile Farmers Market program. Changes/Problems:In 2022, as we celebrated our organization's 50th anniversary, we launched our first capital campaign in our history. This campaign includes purchasing the land on which our YouthGROW Urban Farm is located (we have had an agreement with the current property owner to use the space since 2006) as well as significant investment in the site, including the reconstruction of our existing high tunnel to be replaced by a glass and steel greenhouse. As such, we have delayed making any significant investment in our current outdoor classroom space in order to do this in conjunction with the larger construction that will be taking place at the site. As mentioned above, this has not impacted our ability to meet our programmatic goals. We have been able to utilize our existing outdoor spaces, new office space, and adjacent space from a neighboring community partner to host workshops, field trips, and other programs. An additional shift has been prioritizing our focus on support for farm producers rather than sourcing for the Healthy Retail Pilot. The Worcester Food Policy Council, which supported this initial pilot, has shifted to work with the existing restaurant partners to pilot more culturally relevant summer meals through the Summer Eats program. REC has been supporting this project as a Council member but it has not been feasible at this stage to develop sourcing from urban farms for this project, as restaurants and community partners are still establishing menus that will meet the cultural and nutritional needs of the youth served by these sites. As such, we have focused on direct sourcing to restaurants as well as increasing avenues for the purchase of product from urban farm producers to alternative distribution methods, such as the LFPA food pantry donation program. Fortunately, we have seen dramatic growth in our Mobile Markets during this time period, which provides an additional outlet for increased local food purchase and sale. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff have sought out professional development through conferences and trainings in order to gain the technical skills to push project elements forward. Trainings completed by program staff supporting this project during the reporting period include K-12 Mental Health, Restorative Justice, Racism as Trauma, Strategic Planning, Inclusive Youth Programming, and Coalition and Conflict Management. Staff participated in the Northeast Organic Farming Conference and the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society Conference. A variety of staff participated in all workshop trainings offered by outside facilitators offered through our UGROW Workshop series. Our School Gardens Coordinator participated in a year long Massachusetts Farm to School Institute training as a coach and our YouthGROW Program Coordinator has been actively pursuing a Masters degree in Social Work over the course of the program year, both of which have provided rich resources and connections to bring back to their work as program leaders. Over the past year, we have been active members of the Worcester Together Emergency Food Working Group, now Mayor's Food Security Task Force, the Worcester Food Policy Council, the Central MA SNAP Coalition, the Central MA Youth Jobs Coalition, the I Have a Future youth coalition, the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester, and the Massachusetts State Food Policy Council Advisory Committee. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, results have been disseminated to the best of REC's abilities via formal reports, e-newsletters, and community events. Program reports are shared at the REC's Annual Meeting and fundraisers in the spring. Board members and partners that attend these events overlap with REC's communities of interest. Between 09/2022 and 09/2023 we grew our email subscriber base by 1,622 subscribers and organized members into categories based on their organizational involvement. We now send additional communications alongside our monthly newsletter which include market updates to Farmers Market Customers, upcoming volunteer and workshop opportunities to volunteers, and invitations to event attendees. Additionally, we focused on building relationships with local radio stations this year. During our summer YouthGROW programming, we partnered with Unity Radio Worcester 97.9 to record a podcast that highlighted youth experiences within the YouthGROW program. We also grew our connections with WICN 90.5 and WCUW 91.3 to record advertisements about our Farmers Markets and Annual Plant Sale. We maintain an active presence on social media, where we highlight resources and program events to the community. During the reporting period, we ran 20 paid social media advertisements that promoted an array of REC programming as well as education about SNAP/HIP. We incorporate print advertisement, multi-lingual large format banners and signage, print outreach material, and community organizing as components of our outreach strategies. Our Farmers Market team continues to partner with the Latino Education Institute and our local Division of Public Health to coordinate outreach strategies promoting the Mobile Farmers Market and the Healthy Incentives Program to the Latinx community in Worcester. Additionally, the REC Director of Programs serves on the steering committee for a number of public health and food security related coalitions described above and regularly provides data on our program impacts for larger scale community reports, including our Community Health Improvement Plan. We were able to complete our first iteration of the Net Mapping Evaluation component of this project during this reporting year, under the guidance of Dr. Laurie Ross of Clark University. Net Mapping evaluation involved developing participant created maps of the local food system and analyzing the flow of resources and power as they experience it. Our Program Evaluator was able to lead mapping sessions with staff, YouthGROW participants, Community Garden leaders, and Farmers Market customers, and share back map results with all participants and our staff and board. We anticipate sharing the results of this evaluation process more broadly after the second cycle of mapping is completed, towards the beginning of Year 4. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have been able to utilize our project work plan to guide our activities for this project and will continue to use this as a roadmap to guide our Year Three work. Key Year Three indicators of success will include continuing the growth of our community workshop offerings, creating and supporting a longer term YouthGROW alumni staff role supporting UGROW Community and School gardens workshops, continuing to increase tours and other uses of the YouthGROW Farm as a community gathering space, and building out the structure and size of the UGROW Leadership Cohort. We anticipate the need to be flexible in our goals around sourcing cultural crops from small and BIPOC farmers due to climate related weather patterns and will continue to seek additional resources to be able to meet these farmers' needs. As described in the section below, our capital campaign project has shifted the timeline for changes to our urban farm space, including planned improvements to our outdoor classroom, but we do not anticipate this will impact our programmatic goals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Build capacity for community leadership in the local food system with explicit opportunities to uplift the voices and perspectives of youth, SNAP/HIP consumers, and urban gardeners in decision-making Key accomplishments under this goal include the growth in size, scope, and structure of our Farmers Market Customer Advisory Board. We welcomed back five returning CAB members from 2022 and two new members for a total cohort of seven. We continued to focus on representative leadership by Mobile Market site and developed a calendar of meeting topics for our group as we worked together over the year, which included how to successfully conduct customer surveying, SNAP and HIP advocacy, and partaking in a community health assessment. A key change in the group's function this year was taking on a leadership role in our customer survey collection process. We made the decision to shift our surveys from paper to Survey Monkey, with the goal of increasing participation from non-English speaking customers. We were able to offer our survey in 7 languages through this platform. CAB members did a group training on our evaluation tool and process and were the primary survey collectors. We found the combination of in person support to complete the survey (independently on a tablet, with support from a CAB member, or verbally with the CAB member entering responses,) combined with the trust and relationships CAB members have established at their market sites, yielded a much more representative survey sample (with 238 surveys collected total). We are working to debrief this new process with the CAB this month and hope to continue to incorporate customer leadership in evaluation systems over the coming year. We were able to meet our goal of supporting two YouthGROW alumni in adult staff roles during the reporting period and supporting two alumni as members of our Board of Directors. We were particularly happy to support the leadership of one of these alumni employees, Owen Chase, who has launched his own micro farming business, Just For Fun Farms, selling microgreens on his college campus. Owen was a featured workshop educator for our UGROW workshop series this fall and was able to teach over 22 participants how to grow their own microgreens. Lastly, after a delayed start, we were able to launch our leadership group for community gardeners this growing season. We convened 10 garden leaders during the summer months to invite them to participate in a UGROW Leadership cohort. In addition to networking and providing feedback on better ways to connect with other growers, this group participated in training on seed saving, which they brought back to their fellow community gardeners. We reconvened for a fall Seed Saving celebration dinner and kickoff to our Community Seed Library. Create a hub for community-driven urban agriculture education and training efforts in the city of Worcester at our existing YouthGROW urban farm site to share and promote best practices for food production in low-income urban communities. The Fall 2022 series of workshops offered six opportunities to gather and learn; Native Perennial Planting with the Worcester Native Plant Initiative, Native Perennial Planting at Colony Retirement Homes, Building a Fast-Acting Compost System, Soil Heath with NOFA Mass, Seed Saving, Food Preservation via Canning, and a Garden Club Appreciation Lunch at the Worcester Senior Center which included an informative series of garden presentations from students at Quinsigamond Community College. Our Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 series including the following: Worcester Native Plant Initative Winter Sow Program Sowing Native Perennials at Colony Retirement Homes Sowing Spring Veggies Crafting Herbal Teas and Salves Fruit Tree Pruning Sowing Mushrooms Seed Saving Demonstration with our Peer Learning Cohort / Garden Leadership Team Soil Health with NOFA Mass UGROW Harvest Celebration & Seed Swap (included a seed saving demonstration) Seed Saving at the Webster Housing Authority Native Plants (2 sessions) at the Southbridge Library Habitat-Friendly Fall Cleanup Seed Saving at the Southbridge Library Sowing Microgreens at Home (with one of our own YouthGROW alumni) These workshops presented opportunities for participants to build connections with fellow members of the local food system and to learn ways to promote their own health and wellness. We are currently looking to upcoming opportunities for workshops to host during the winter months. In addition to on farm workshops and tours, our UGROW staff team delivered 123 school based workshops, garden plantings, and Mobile Market visits, serving over 2,401 Worcester Public School students during the reporting period. We were able to host 405 Worcester Public School students on the YouthGROW Farm Campus this spring and offered farm tours, the majority of which were youth led, to 615 guests, nearly doubling the number of tour participants from our previous reporting year. Strengthen the local food economy by increasing opportunities for the purchase and sale of local produce through the Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) and by investing in and supporting BIPOC and New American entrepreneurial projects. We were able to offer Mobile Markets at 15 weekly locations during the summer and fall months, exceeding our planned target of 10. In winter we visited 10 different markets, two in Webster and one in Southbridge. We additionally coordinated 7 pilot markets to promote awareness of the Healthy Incentives Program and pilot areas for growth. We hosted standing farmers markets 3 days/week June-October and supported 11 farmers and local food producers. 94% of all transactions made through our Mobile Markets were made with SNAP or FMNP coupons, a strong indicator that we are meeting our target population. We have worked with World Farmers to support three of their farmer participants to vend directly at our markets, offering culturally relevant produce from their countries of origin. We have also continued our wholesale purchasing relationship for our Mobile Markets to be able to purchase culturally relevant crops. This was an incredible challenging growing season for Massachusetts farmers with massive flooding in several communities, including Lancaster, where the majority of World Farmers growing plots are located, as well as Harpers Farm, one of our anchor vendors at Beaver Brooks. Farmers reported up to 90% crop loss due to flooding and we had many market dates canceled due to rain. We were able to secure separate funding this year through the Massachusetts Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which allowed our Farmers Market team to purchase food from small and BIPOC farmers at market rate to provide for donation through emergency food assistance programs. This enabled us to make additional purchases outside of Mobile Market inventory from four farmers totaling $25,728.38 dollars over the 2023 growing season, which was donated to three local food pantries.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audiences reached by our efforts include low-income residents of Worcester, Webster, and Southbridge. More specifically, our YouthGROW program participants were 100% low income members of the Main South and Bell Hill communities.YouthGROW participant selection prioritizes disconnected youth, including youth who are homeless, involved in the court system, or in foster care. Many participants are also recent immigrants. Our community and school gardens network served a diverse constituency, including over 1,000 students at Worcester Public Schools, 64% of whom are economically disadvantaged, or low income, 30% of whom identify as English Language Learners and 55% identify as having a first language other than English. The majority of Worcester Public students identify as persons of color (71%), 21% are classified as students with disabilities, and 81% classify as students with High Needs. The overwhelming majority of customers served by REC Community Farmers Markets are low-income, as evidenced by sales data from 2021 which showed 92% of purchases across all markets were made with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps,) WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program,) and Senior Coupons. Our customer base is linguistically diverse and includes many recent immigrants. Common languages spoken at market include Arabic, Albanian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish. We also serve a high percentage of seniors with limited ability to travel to traditional farmers markets through our Mobile Farmers Market program. Changes/Problems:As described above, we delayed the launch of the Peer Learning Cohort for UGROW members due to the Omicron surge but anticipate launching this project in the winter months. We are otherwise moving forward as planned with our proposed goals and objectives for this project. We are also working to develop a larger scale improvement project for our YouthGROW urban farm site, potentially including the addition of a glass and steel greenhouse, and thus may delay spending our Year Two budget for outdoor classroom improvements until that plan is finalized so that the improvements can be done comprehensively. We expect to have a better understanding of that timeline midway through Year Two and will be in communication with our grant officer accordingly. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff have sought out professional development through conferences and trainings in order to gain the technical skills to push project elements forward. Trainings completed by program staff supporting this project during the reporting period include the Master Urban Gardener Certificate Program, Understanding Trauma Sensitive Practices in Youth Work, Seed Savers Exchange Virtual Seed School, Massachusetts Farm to School Cohort Training Institute, Worcester Supporting Change Agents Equity Cohort, Worcester Trauma, Resiliency, and Racial Equity Training Institute, and the Grassroots Seed Propagation of Native Plants. Staff have also supported participant and volunteer professional development through securing funding for on site training in tree pruning for school gardens coordinators and supporting Goddard Elementary School to apply for and be selected as a school based team for the Massachusetts Farm to School Cohort Institute in fall of 2022. We have provided on site professional development and training opportunities here at the farm for our community members and have been able to collaborate with the Worcester Native Plant Initiative to promote community tours of native plant gardens. Over the past year, we have been active members of the Worcester Together Emergency Food Working Group, now Mayor's Food Security Task Force, the Worcester Food Policy Council, the Central MA SNAP Coalition, the Central MA Youth Jobs Coalition, the I Have a Future youth coalition, the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester, and the Massachusetts State Food Policy Council Advisory Committee. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, results have been disseminated to the best of REC's abilities via formal reports, an e-newsletter, and community events. Program reports are shared at the REC's Annual Meeting and fundraisers in the spring. Board members and partners that attend these events overlap with REC's communities of interest. A monthly newsletter is managed by REC's development staff and provided to subscribers with a breadth of organizational involvement. Most recently, we have collaborated with the team from Harvard Public Health magazine who are developing a series of videos on the deep effects of structural racism on health and well-being, which will feature a video highlighting the YouthGROW program. We maintain an active presence on social media, where we highlight resources and program events to the community. We incorporate radio ads, print advertisement, multi-lingual large format banners and signage, print outreach material, and community organizing as components of our outreach strategies. Our Farmers Market team has partnered with the Latino Education Institute and our local Division of Public Health to coordinate outreach strategies promoting the Mobile Farmers Market and the Healthy Incentives Program to the Latinx community in Worcester. Additionally, the REC Director of Programs serves on the steering committee for a number of public health and food security related coalitions described above and regularly provides data on our program impacts for larger scale community reports, including our Community Health Improvement Plan. Lastly, we have begun working with Dr. Laurie Ross of Clark University to launch the Net Mapping evaluation component of this project which involved developing participant created maps of the local food system and analyzing the flow of resources and power as they experience it. We have held initial focus groups testing this evaluation strategy, which is new for us, with YouthGROW participants and found it to be a helpful and generative exercise in broadening our understanding and their understanding of local food resources. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have been able to utilize our project work plan to guide our activities for this project and will continue to use this as a roadmap to guide our Year Two work. Key Year Two indicators of success will include formalizing our community workshop offering process and calendar, expanding educational workshop offerings and tours, increasing YouthGROW alumni representation as Farmers Market staff, and launching the Peer Learning Cohort and Community Seed Library. We also expect to incorporate key learnings from the CustomerAdvisory Board into our Mobile Farmers Market operations and practices and expand our cultural crop sourcing efforts to include more targeted support for Worcester based urban farmers.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Key accomplishments under this goal include employing two YouthGROW alumni in adult staff roles during the reporting period and supporting two alumni as members of our Board of Directors. Additionally, we worked with the Worcester Food Policy Council members to identify a strategy for piloting formal youth involvement. We supported YouthGROW Junior Staff to attend a Food Policy Council meeting, identified a policy priority area for them to focus on, and established a partnership with Project Bread to support youth involvement on this topic (universal school meals.) Project Bread worked with us to coordinate a youth training on the basics of the legislative process and understanding this issue and youth will work in the fall to self identify next steps for their involvement. We successfully relaunched the Customer Advisory Board with 5 members, representing neighborhoods/organizations that have been longstanding Mobile Market partners. Members have been active in outreach and supporting market activities, developed relationship with staff, and collected and shared feedback. We will be convening this body for a group in the fall to share individual member feedback, identify key themes, and make recommendations for the winter market season. We chose to delay launching the Peer Learning Cohort for the UGROW Garden Coordinators. This was planned to kick off in the winter month with our annual Garden Appreciation and Evaluation Dinner but this event was canceled due to the Omicron surge. Staff felt strongly that it was important for this group to be in person and once we were able to resume in person gathering, we had a full calendar of spring workshop offerings that made outreach for an additional body challenging. We anticipate convening this group in January of 2023. Create a hub for community-driven urban agriculture education and training efforts in the city of Worcester at our existing YouthGROW urban farm site to share and promote best practices for food production in low-income urban communities. Initial steps to propel our urban agriculture education goal have included beginning a series of garden workshops. The Spring 2022 series of workshops offered three skill shares; Caring for Fruit Trees, Raised Bed Building and Seed Starting. These workshops were opportunities for participants to build connections with fellow members of the local food system and improve health-promoting skills. See below for a description of our Bed Building workshop: On a rainy afternoon in March, urban gardeners from all over the city of Worcester gathered in the REC warehouse for the second installment of our workshop series; building raised garden beds. Staff members, junior staff and YouthGROW members led 20 participants through the stages of building two styles of raised beds; one using more durable but expensive lumber, another using more cost efficient lumber. Participants included neighborhood residents, youth, and community members from various organizations including the Main South Community Development Center, the Worcester Islamic Center, and Working for Worcester. Despite the challenges of using heavy lumber and power tools, participants and staff collaborated by working in groups and distributing duties. In conversation with participants, some folks shared that they planned on using these skills to improve infrastructure at their respective garden sites. In one group, local college students shared that their bed building skills would be used to train their teams within the Working for Worcester organization. Founded in 2012 by a group of Holy Cross students, Working for Worcester seeks to mobilize college students to improve recreation infrastructure and opportunities for Worcester community members. This youth-led group will build 6 garden beds at various community centers across the city this spring. According to current co-Executive Director and workshop attendee Sabrina Ramos, "Sustainability is one of Working for Worcester's biggest goals so this was really applicable to our mission as an organization. Going over the specific types of wood, screws, power tools, and helpful tips were extremely beneficial to bring this information back to the team and replicate a garden bed on our own." We have worked with community partners and local experts this summer to plan our fall workshop series and are currently promoting a calendar of 8 fall garden workshops, covering topics including Composting, Soil Health, Food Preservation, and Seed Saving. We were also able to host Worcester Public School students for farm field trips for the first time this spring. Vernon Street School, Tatnuck Magnet School, Central MA Collaborative School, and Goddard Elementary all brough students for a YouthGROW Farm Field trip. Our largest group was over 80 students and was collaboratively hosted with staff from New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill who led an activity on tree identification. In addition to on farm workshops and tours, our UGROW staff team delivered 59 school based workshops, garden plantings, and Mobile Market visits, serving over 1,000 Worcester Public School students during the reporting period. Strengthen the local food economy by increasing opportunities for the purchase and sale of local produce through the Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) and by investing in and supporting BIPOC and New American entrepreneurial projects. We were able to offer Mobile Markets at 15 weekly locations during the reporting period, exceeding our planned target of 10. We additionally coordinated 8 pop up pilot markets to promote awareness of the Healthy Incentives Program and pilot areas for growth. We additionally hosted standing farmers markets 3 days/week June-October and supported 11 farmers and local food producers. 92% of all transactions made through our Mobile Markets were made with SNAP or FMNP coupons, a strong indicator that we are meeting our target population. We have worked with World Farmers to support three of their farmer participants to vend directly at our markets, offering culturally relevant produce from their countries of origin. We have also worked with new members of their staff to establish a wholesale purchasing relationship for our Mobile Markets to be able to purchase culturally relevant crops. A challenging spring growing season and changing staff made this a slower start than planned but we have been able to incorporate these products into our weekly ordering process this summer. We are excited to expand our relationship with Kokoriko's Fried Chicken, a local restaurant with whom we have established a sourcing relationship for local produce grown on the YouthGROW farm for their fresh juice line. We were able to welcome them as a vendor at our University Park Farmers Market this summer and have been excited to both expand our array of local products available and invest and support in our local restaurant community.
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