2020 has been a challenging year across the globe, in our community, and here at Working Food.
Meals in production, ready to go out to our community.
In March, when the full realization of the pandemic hit, Working Food sprung to action to help our community with food access, while simultaneously shifting the way our programs operated. We had the opportunity to work with new partners to create a drive through market, a meal relief program using locally-sourced food, and shifted both our seed and youth programs to an online format. The importance of the nonprofit sector’s services and food systems efforts has become more evident with the general public, who witnessed global food systems fail, trickling down to local businesses and individuals impacted by COVID-19.
With our well-earned reputation in the community, hard-working passionate staff and board members, and our physical facilities, Working Food has proudly accomplished the following since March of 2020:
Meal Relief Program
We connected local food businesses with local produce to deliver over 17,000 meals to families in need through the Working Food Relief program. This effort employed local chefs such as Chef JJ’s Creations and Bert Gill for to hire staff and prepare fresh meals for those in need, hire individuals in the Greater Duval Neighborhood Association to deliver meals, and utilize local produce from Fisher Farms, Frog Song, Swallowtail Farm, and Family Garden to create healthy meals. This program fostered relationships with 12 other community partners to coordinate meal delivery to those most in need.
New seed packet art this year by our friend Wendy Free!
Home Gardening Support
We continued our efforts to support the growing interest and demand for home gardens that spiked significantly. Since March we have dispersed 1,895 seed packets through our new online Seed Shop to facilitate safe and easy seed access. Global seed shortages and delays left many gardeners and some farmers with limited access to seeds – the very foundation of a food system. We also went into high gear seedling production at Grow Hub, even with less labor available, to sell over 500 edible plants. We also donated many seeds, plants and soil to those in need.
Drive-Thru Farmers Market
We served approximately 400 residents and 10+ local farmers & producers per week for 12 weekends at our drive through farmers market, and continue in a more limited capacity even now. Staff and volunteers worked twice a week to coordinate and operate the busy market that has received heaps of gratitude and support from people looking for safe access to fresh food, and farmers that needed the outlet with some of their other sales disappearing. Currently, we have 6 producer’s offering pick-up at Working Food to continue a safe, low-contact option for customers.
Rain or shine the drive-thru market went on!
Youth Programming from Home
Now that our weekly youth program was shuttered, we shifted gears to provide 284 “Explore at Home” activity kits to 32 students in our garden program due to cancellation of weekly after-school activities. Kits were delivered to our kids with all the things they needed for fun activities away from the computer like seed germination, flower pressing and sun prints, constructing a barometer, designing a bug sucker, making a window bird feeder and molding clay mushrooms. These kits were very well received. One student even takes her native flowering plant in it’s pot, inside and out each day to make sure it gets sun and attention!
Kits for the kids to keep learning about gardening and science while at home.
Learning Online
Hosted 3 online workshops exploring seed stewardship, seed libraries, and growing tomatoes. Our annual Southern Seed School which is typically an in-person weekend-long workshop, was offered as a comprehensive online resource available any time, and complemented with a powerful 2 hour interactive discussion with prominent authors Janisse Ray and Ben Cohen, and several local seed stewards and educators. Over 80 people attended and the response was very positive! Everyone on our staff attended and supported in some way from facilitating to back-end technology and every single one of us cried tears of inspiration. We also held the first annual Seed Librarian summit, bringing together librarians from across Florida to discuss strategies and opportunities for creating and managing local seed libraries and how to get seeds safely to their patrons.
Tomato Bootcamp went online, drawing visitors from far and wide!
Taught 2 youth cooking classes online, complete with all ingredients and kitchen supplies needed for each student. This collaboration with Greater Duval Neighborhood Association’s Summer Sling program was a test run to explore how this material can be effectively translated through this new teaching platform.
Community Support
We collaborated with over 40 community organizations locally and nationally to do this good work. Many new community partnerships were created as we all came together to elevate our impact. We were able to maintain employment for a third year for 2 adults with disabilities. While we had to scale back hours due to social distancing requirements, we were able to keep supporting Shaquille to work with us at Grow Hub in the gardens and packaging seeds, and Joan to keep our facilities sparkling.
