HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — Nearly 1.5 million people in North Carolina don’t always have enough food to eat. Even more face limited options for getting affordable food that is also healthy and fresh produce can be even harder to find.
A nonprofit called Growing High Point is looking to shorten the distance from farm to table by putting gardens right in the neighborhoods that need food the most and teaching young people how to plant and grow their own food. A grant from the High Point Community Foundation helped make it possible.
The money helps young volunteer farmers learn to plant, grow, and harvest fresh food right in their neighborhoods. Each vegetable helps feed some of the most vulnerable in the community. Growing High Point’s Executive Director, Jodi Sarver says the vegetables will be harvested and then taken to a food hub. “Then what we will do is take it out into the community, either on the bodega or the farmers market,” she says. “We also feed seniors and refugees here in High Point as well.”
Growing High Point has 20 youth employees who work to train the next generation of farmers. Those people will then be able to cultivate and maintain more urban farms. Kahil Siler is now a youth mentor, but he says at first, he wasn’t enthused about the work. It’s something he grew into. “Before I first started, I wasn’t really as motivated. Now I can get up in the morning and come out in the garden, put some plants in the ground, water the plants,” he says. “It’s more of a lesson on life, you live and you learn.”
Those lessons pay dividends. Last year Growing High Point distributed 15 thousand pounds of food to feed people. 9 thousand pounds of that went to stock shelves at local food pantries. Much of that food was distributed through a big green bus known affectionately as the “growdega.” It’s a mobile food truck that goes to food deserts to deliver fresh vegetables that volunteers have grown. It is powered largely by the youth members and volunteers.
Sarver says from what she’s seen, people don’t give our youth enough credit. “What I’m seeing, and our team is seeing, is that they want to work,” she says. “They want more hours, they want more opportunities, and they’re getting exposed to ideas that I don’t think they had before.”
Many of these young farmers are ages 14 to 18 and are still in school, so Saturdays are a big day for farming at these urban plots. Teens do even more work over the summer for $10 an hour, but they’re also learning a valuable lesson in life that will help feed their families and their communities.
For more information on Growing High Point, click here.
