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Increasing Food Access to Improve Health in Oregon

Growing Gardens, which received a Direct Relief Fund for Health Equity grant, is working to connect people with the education and knowledge to grow their own food.

News

Health Equity

Inmates at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility work on an outdoor garden that is not just a food source, but a place of renewal and growth. (Image by Oliver Riley-Smith)
By Staff

Access to healthy, locally grown food isn’t an option for many communities, a fact that Growing Gardens, a Portland-based nonprofit, is working to remedy in order to create better health outcomes.

Growing Gardens, founded in 1996, began as a community gardening initiative and has since expanded to include partnerships with schools through its Youth Grow program. The organization also runs a program in Oregon correctional facilities called Lettuce Grow. The organization focuses on food growth as a way to nourish the body as well as the larger community and ecosystem.

“There have been systemic choices to restrict access to healthy, nourishing food for specific people,” including those inside correctional facilities, said Jason Skipton, executive director of Growing Gardens.

Rima Green, who leads the Lettuce Grow program, said the intent is to allow people inside correctional facilities to have access to job training, horticulture education, and improve the food they have access to while incarcerated. “They’re turning a sand pit into a flower garden and they’re growing their own vegetables,” she said.

This process is deeply meaningful for inmates at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.

“When you have no form of escape, that can take you to a deep, dark place,” said Angela Miller, peer facilitator at the facility. “The gardening program allows you to process that in different ways. When you’re pulling a weed, it’s almost like you’re releasing something within you.”

“To rise up out of the ashes of our past and be a part of something beautiful changes our hearts,” said Kristina Landrum, inmate and participant in the program.

The organization also works with families to establish home gardens to connect people to foods that are important to their culture. The organization also runs a CSA program that connects residents with home deliveries of fresh produce.

Growing Gardens not only teaches people to grow their own food, but prioritizes hiring and training past program participants to serve as educators, organizers, and coordinators, providing workforce and leadership development for the people in the community it serves.

Community organizers are trained as community health workers to help communities access healthcare despite barriers such as language, insurance, or immigration status. It also partners with affordable housing developments and healthcare clinics to provide residents and patients access to healthy, locally grown produce to improve their health status.

Direct Relief’s Fund for Health Equity, with support from Eli Lilly and Company, supported Growing Gardens with a $300,000 grant.

This video was directed, produced, and edited by Oliver Riley-Smith Cinematography.

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