Growing Hope

Growing Hope's mission is to help people improve their lives and communities through gardening & healthy food access, by fostering learning, improving nutrition, encouraging self-reliance and promoting positive community futures. Growing Hope acts as a catalyst and resource for community-based garden programs, with specific emphasis on education, food production, and life empowerment.

Using a strengths-based approach, Growing Hope works to build people’s capacity to use growing food as a vehicle for positive social, economic, environmental, and neighborhood change. We advocate for healthy food, manage (and founded!) the Downtown Ypsilanti Farmers’ Market, and train youth and adults to make positive investments in their future. Our Garden Leadership Training classes facilitate community & school garden development throughout the region. Our Seed2Plate after-school and summer programs teach at-risk young people to grow, cook, & eat healthy food, led in the summer by teens we train as peer educators. We consistently engage in local and statewide policy and advocacy and regularly share best practices with colleagues.

We reach across socio-economic and cultural boundaries to lessen the divide, believing in the power of community that stems from community, gardening, and urban, sustainable agriculture. What sustains and feeds the body, sustains and feeds a culture!