Our Work
We grow food. And so much more.
Young people see crisis everywhere they look. A quarter of New Orleans residents are food insecure. We face an ecological and climate emergency. Racial segregation persists in our schools and our neighborhoods decades after legal integration. How do we move toward sustainability and justice?
We grow food. At Grow Dat, we are modeling a different kind of food system, where all people and the planet are valued and respected. Growing food reconnects us to the earth while it nourishes our bodies and minds. With each harvest, we move toward a city where local healthy food is abundant, where everyone has enough to eat. Caring for the soil, we sequester carbon and build resilience to extreme weather, making a long term investment in a greener city.
We grow young leaders. Growing food gives young people the opportunity to be a part of a meaningful solution to our interlocking crises; it teaches us that we can make change. Our curriculum roots in young people’s everyday experiences as a doorway to thinking critically and structurally about the past and present in order to imagine and build a better future. The program is led in a large part by youth and young adults, many of whom are alumni of the program themselves. This approach provides an opportunity for participants to exercise leadership, developing the confidence and courage they need to work for change.
We grow community. Building a better future is not a solo project. It has to happen in community, and that means working across differences. At Grow Dat, we celebrate our diverse cultures and actively work to build meaningful relationships across all kinds of differences in identity and experience. Youth and adults learn and practice high-level communication and build the collaborative skills we need to collectively work toward the future we deserve.
Photo: Katie Sikora
We grow the future. We work to move into right relationship with the planet, which means recognizing that we are part of the earth, not its masters. We look carefully at our history in order to understand the present and envision alternatives. We build different ways of being together, of listening to each other, of working together. At Grow Dat, we move toward a just and sustainable future by bringing it into being on our land and with our young people, planting its seeds every day.