FARM STAND in action! All natural celery, zuchinni, squash, herbs, kale and glorious cherry tomatoes! Photo Credit: Ariel Roland
Visit the Grow Dat Farm Stand for the next two Saturdays!
9am-12pm
Saturday June 15 & Saturday June 22
150 Zachary Taylor Drive
Grow Dat recently hosted a Youth Anti-Violence Summit on the farm in response to the shooting on Mother’s Day which deeply touched our Grow Dat community.
It was a day of reflection, sharing, and an attempt to envision a world different than the one we inhabit today. Filmmaker John Richie screened a section of his film Shellshocked and answered questions. Youth wrote letters to someone in their lives that had been touched by gun violence, and then shared their letters with another crew member.
Crew members were invited to create two kinds of trees: an unhealthy tree that maps systems of violence in New Orleans and beyond; and a healthy tree that maps systems of individual and community-wide success, peace and happiness. Youth were encouraged to identify the roots of both trees, brainstorm what sustains the roots and helps the trees grow (the trunk), and what sort of leaves or fruit are produced by each foundation. As leaves fall from the trees and touch the earth, they become the soil that nourishes the roots, creating a system that is reinforced and recirculated over time.
Tree of Life
Tree of Violence
William Mupo from the Health Department at the Mayor’s Office shared the city’s plan to address violence, and listened to youth recommendations on what they think the city should do.
Grow Dat youth answer the question: What can the City do to improve New Orleans?
Purchase youth-grown sustainable produce on our farm in June
Farm Stand
The Grow Dat Youth Farm
150 Zachary Taylor Drive
9am-12noon
Saturdays, June 1, June 8, June 15, June 22
Youth Crew Members Storie and Cory harvest greens to be sold at Saturday markets across New Orleans
Our Harvest Volunteer Days (for individuals) this spring/summer are:
Come help us harvest and prepare our produce for distribution. Volunteers will prep both our donated Shared Harvest and the crops youth Crew Members will sell at Saturday Farmer’s Markets around the city.
For Groups:
For group volunteers we suggest a $7 donation per Volunteer to cover supplies and staff time for the volunteer event. Please contact Jabari Brown to discuss bringing your group to Grow Dat.
We have various needs and opportunities for many other volunteer tasks – please email Jabari Brown, Volunteer Coordinator and Youth Education Specialist at jabari1@growdatyouthfarm.org for more information.
Come work in our beautiful fields – we appreciate your support of our work to grow food for New Orleans!
GROW DAT YOUTH FARM TO HOST HOOTENANNY- BARN DANCE BENEFIT
Grab your dancing shoes to cut a rug for a great cause
Thursday, April 18, 7pm-10pm
Grow Dat Youth Farm, 150 Zachary Taylor Drive, City Park
The mission of the Grow Dat Youth Farm is to nurture a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing food. You can support these young adults who are growing food for New Orleanians by joining us for the Grow Dat Hootenanny. Proceeds from this Barn Dance Benefit will help us employ 25 young adults to grow 9,000 pounds of food this year!
What: Hootenanny featuring Bruce ‘Sunpie’ Barnes & the Louisiana Sunspots and the Small Batch String Band. Square dancing led by caller Nathan Harrison will kick off an evening of revelry on the farm.
An ole’ fashioned Cake Walk will showcase tempting cakes from premier NOLA Pastry Chefs: Cochon from the Link Restaurant Group, Maurepas Foods, Domenica, and Boucherie.
When: Thursday, April 18, 7-10 pm
Details: $15-$20 entry to dance the night away. Fat Falafel and La Cocinita food trucks, craft cocktails and ice cold beer on-hand. All tickets, food and drink sales benefit local teens growing food for New Orleans!
Sponsored by Slow Food NOLA
Purchase tickets now or at the door: http://barndancebenefit.brownpapertickets.com
PUT ON YOUR DANCING SHOES AND COME OUT TO THE FARM APRIL 18 TO SUPPORT GROW DAT!
Global Kids Environmental Justice Institute 2012
This afternoon I’m boarding a plane with three Grow Dat Policy Interns – Amber Young, Josh Kemp, and Kamau Johnson – to attend the National Youth Climate Exchange (NYCE) in Pennsylvania.
Grow Dat is honored to join the NYCE, the latest Global Kid’s Human Rights Activist project. Youth from Grow Dat in New Orleans are participating in a 3-day climate action summit with Build it Up West Virginia and Global Kids students from NYC and Washington, DC.
Addressing climate change is key to us at Grow Dat because food system emissions account for between 19%-29% of all total greenhouse gases. And agricultureaccounts for 80%-86% of emissions within the food system. Check out the infographics from CGIAR:
On our farm, youth grow food using sustainable and chemical-free methods. Our commitment to carbon reduction and environmental stewardship ensures that agriculture is part of the solution, rather than remaining a leading contributor to the problem.
To reduce our carbon footprint, most of the 5-month long fellowship is conducted via Google Hangout and conference calls. This summit is an opportunity for youth to get to know one another face-to-face. Atendees will spend the weekend crafting action plans for environmental justice work in their communities.
Youth in New Orleans know all too well the threat of sea level rise and the fallout of increasingly extreme weather patterns. Their voices are key to understanding the real impacts of a changing climate.
Stay tuned to see these young activists in action upon their return!
-Jeanne Firth
Grow Dat Program Specialist
Look for Market Leader Amber Young (right, 2nd year Grow Dat worker) at the market every week as she leads rotating crews of new youth employees at the Pop Up Market.
To market to market we go!
Grow Dat is proud to announce New Orleans’ first weekly Pop Up Market! Youth Crew Members will be selling their wares every Saturday this spring at the new Columbia Parc at the Bayou District development (formerly St. Bernard). The market features a wide variety Grow Dat’s fresh, affordable produce grown and sold by local teens.
Grow Dat Pop Up Market
Every Saturday
10:30am-1pm
Columbia Parc at the Bayou District
@ Caton & Duplessis
DEAL ALERT! First time customers get BOGO – Buy One, Get One – on all their produce purchases!
Mobile Farmer’s Market designed by Tulane City Center Architecture student Justin Siragusa
Look for our fancy schmancy mobile farmer’s market that hitches to the back of our farm truck. See it and know that delicious and affordable produce abounds!
Granola bars, local satsumas, fruit leather, organic juices. These snacks are more than tasty: they are absolutely key to the nutrition and success of the young people who work on our farm.
At Grow Dat, our mission is to nurture a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing food–a straightforward mission and goal, but one that is complicated by the challenges facing the young adults we hire to work on our farm.
This year we have refined our evaluation tools, allowing us to capture more baseline nutrition and diet data from youth in the program. When we administered the survey this February, even we were surprised by what we found out. Of 25 youth surveyed, 50% reported not having eaten a single meal the day the survey was administered, with an additional 46% reporting eating only one full meal that day (the survey was administered at 5 pm). Only 50% reported having eaten any fruit in the last 24 hours and only 12% (3 out of 25) reported having eaten any vegetables in the last 24 hours. Additionally, 20% reported drinking at least one soda a day.
When the young adults who work with us arrive from work, so often they arrive hungry. Thus, we want to send a huge thank you to Whole Foods at Arabella Station for providing daily snacks that allow us to greet youth at the start of each work day with something healthy to eat. Often the first time they try many different kinds of fruits and vegetables is at work. This exposure to food that is good for them, that they can eat as much of as they wish, provides an essential foundation and support that allows them to thrive in the often very physically demanding work of farming. It also reinforces that they are in an environment where they are cared for, which encourages them to take risks and grow as individuals.
Thank you for your partnership, Whole Foods!
Snack time at Grow Dat! Kevin Perry and local strawberries.
Our giant chalkboard announces the agricultural tasks on our plate. Photo by William Widmer
Our Harvest Volunteer Days (for individuals) this spring are:
February 5th through May 17th 2013.
Come help us harvest and prepare our produce for distribution. Volunteers will prep both our donated Shared Harvest and the crops youth Crew Members will sell at Saturday Farmer’s Markets around the city.
For Groups:
For group volunteers we suggest a $7 donation per Volunteer to cover supplies and staff time for the volunteer event. Please contact Jabari Brown to discuss bringing your group to Grow Dat.
We have various needs and opportunities for many other volunteer tasks – please email Jabari Brown, Volunteer Coordinator and Youth Education Specialist at jabari1@growdatyouthfarm.org for more information.
Jabari Brown, Volunteer Coordinator at Grow Dat.
Last spring filmmaker Chandra Simon of Cultivate Films visited Grow Dat while touring small farms throughout the Gulf region.
Simon produced a beautiful short film about our young urban farmers, featuring Crew Members Yasmin Davis, Tim Dubuclet, Martin Raymond and Co-Director Johanna Gilligan. Enjoy!
The fire at Hubigs pies, The New Orleans Food Truck Coalition, a smattering of new restaurants and Grow Dat! Times-Picayune writer Judy Walker recently featured Grow Dat in her annual profile of the top New Orleans food stories of the year.
Highlighting the top trends for New Orleans food in 2012, Walker reports on the continuing increase of stellar food Grown in New Orleans:
‘Also in City Park, the Grow Dat Youth Farm, which grows young leaders as well as produce, started cultivating two of their four acres on Zachary Taylor Boulevard. Their innovative campus, made of shipping containers, is part of their partnership with the Tulane City Center at the Tulane School of Architecture.’
The Cypress Field in full bloom. Early evening, June 2012.
Will you help us grow by supporting our year-end Growing the Green giving campaign?
Youth at work in the fields. Photo by Dacia Idom.
“I learned that being connected to the earth sort of strengthens the connection we have to other beings.”
-Youth Crew Member
Youth of color, girls, and urban youth have the lowest rates of outdoor time in the United States. Grow Dat gives young people the opportunity to connect and explore the natural world in meaningful ways. Please support our work in outdoor education!
Photo by Dacia Idom
“Everybody’s got their own story and it’s always good to hear
what people gotta say.
That’s the biggest lesson I got from this program: that everybody is human and everybody has their own separate theme.”
-Youth Crew Member
Please help us nuture a diverse group of young leaders through the meaningful work of growing good.
We’re so excited that we’re halfway to our goal! We need your support to push us over the finish line.
Yahoo! Over 60 indivdiual donors decided to support Grow Dat this holiday season in our big push last week, and this morning we reached the halfway point of our goal: $5,500 out of $10,000! That means we have $4,500 to raise before the end of the year. Won’t you find a way to contribute to help us Grow That Green?
