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To create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. Our community produces healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and inspires and supports others to create change in their own communities.
Since our founding in 1991, The Food Project has grown into a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that works at the intersection of youth, food, and community. Young people are the driving force of The Food Project and work on our farms and with community members to realize the right to food that nourishes our communities and the planet we share.
Each year, we employ 120 teenagers in this vital work on 70 acres of urban and suburban farmland across eastern Massachusetts, growing 200,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables. This food is used to enact innovative food system initiatives that increase access to fresh, healthy food for all.
Your collective dollars plant seeds for a more equitable tomorrow and a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, local, healthy, affordable food.
We believe that access to fresh, healthy, affordable food is a human right and that, given the tools, today’s youth will become tomorrow’s food justice leaders.
Over the past 30 years, we’ve welcomed more than 1,800 teenagers from across eastern Massachusetts to our urban and suburban farms as part of our year-round youth development programs. By growing together with peers of diverse racial and gender identities from a wide range of urban and suburban communities, youth build relationships that broaden their perspectives and build shared values in the service of a more just and compassionate world. They become leaders and advocates, often working alongside adults in their communities to build a healthier, more equitable local food system.
Much of our work takes place in the vibrant, multicultural communities of Dudley (in Boston), and Lynn (on the North Shore). In each, we collaborate with public sector and nonprofit partners and residents. Our approach to partnership involves mutual respect and learning, understanding the unique strengths and capacities of each community, and creating opportunities for the residents and stakeholders to guide priorities. And our youth are helping every step of the way, from staffing our table at affordable farmers markets to building gardens for local residents.
Our goal is to transform the food system into a more just, community-engaged model that supports food security for all while connecting diverse communities to each other and to the land.
In support of the right to buy food, we grow food on our farms and sell it at low cost through subsidized neighborhood farmers’ markets. Knowing that affordability is a challenge in our neighborhoods, we focus on building models for selling fresh food that work for both farmers and low-income customers.
In support of the right of our neighbors to grow their own food, we install raised-bed gardens for home growers, community gardens, and schools, and we provide resources and technical support to support a thriving community of growers, from the newest beginners to the experts.
The Food Project’s urban farms are located in the communities of Dudley in Boston and Lynn on the North Shore. These vibrant, diverse communities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) lack access to healthy, affordable food and meaningful employment opportunities.
A collaborative, encouraging work environment inspires confidence among young people, with lasting effects on their education and career trajectories. But young people of color, particularly from low-income families, face system-level challenges to meaningful and gainful employment, from geographic location to underrepresentation in industries and jobs.
Simultaneously, the need for affordable and healthy food has only become more acute during the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, with BIPOC households recovering significantly more slowly than white households. By March 2022, 15.3% of white households with children were food insecure compared to more than 33% of Black households with children and 27.6% of Latino/a households with children.
These communities also experience obesity and diabetes at a rate far above the state of Massachusetts overall. With fewer places to purchase fresh produce, low-income families and BIPOC residents are less likely to consume fruits and vegetables.
Youth, food, and community: these are the three tenets of The Food Project’s work for the past 30 years. According to an alumni research report we commissioned, more than 1,800 youth have graduated from our development programs, with 80% expressing the confidence they gained at The Food Project shaping their leadership style or their voice as a leader. Meanwhile, more than five million pounds of produce has been cultivated on our 70 acres of urban and suburban land. Also importantly, our youth and staff have built more than 1,400 raised-bed gardens in backyards and community spaces so that communities can grow their own food. These strong leaders of tomorrow, the fresh food in the hands of those who need it most, the resources provided to harvest one’s own food: that is our mark of a job well done.
Every person has a right to have fresh, healthy food on their table. The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a powerful spotlight on the inequities that exist within our current food system, ranging from spiked prices to devastatingly bare grocery shelves. More than ever, there is an urgent need for getting food to the people and communities who have the least access. Responding with rapid changes in our program operations, we are distributing more than 400,000 servings of fresh produce to those facing food insecurity in Boston and Lynn, MA. A gift to The Food Project can change a life. It can also feed a family.
Would you give $4 a month to support four nonprofits that are making a big difference? Join forces with other 52andChangmakers to automatically give to every Cause of the Week. Every Monday, you’ll wake up knowing you’ve already made a difference! As our community grows, so does the impact!
Together we’ve become volunteers in places we would have never expected, planted milkweed for butterflies, provided books to kids in need, helped save endangered turtles, helped turn excess food into nutrition, helped bring art to youth, educated one another about how we are connected to our delicate food systems, helped save abandoned horses and given old dogs new hope, watched foster youth shine in the spotlight of movie making, helped clean tires out of rivers… we could go on and on and on. It is an absolute joy to be a part of such an amazing network of humans making a difference.
“ALMA reconnects the lives of the formerly incarcerated back to the fabric of society. Our participants have the chance at attaining gainful employment and becoming self-sufficient. Urban Farming helps everyone involved explore the relationships between plants, animals and humans as a way of creating a profound connection to both nature and their community.” - ALMA Backyard Farms
While we’re writing this and you’re reading it, Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes is out there, finding ways to provide food to more people in need throughout Santa Cruz County, where one of three residents are reported to be food insecure.
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