Sustainability & Sustainable Enterprise

Garden-Raised Bounty (GRuB) is a grassroots non-profit organization dedicated to nourishing a strong community by empowering people and growing good food. We grow inspired, self-confident and community-minded youth through educational and employment opportunities.  We help low-income families and seniors to help themselves by building raised-bed gardens at their homes.  We work in Thurston & Mason counties in Washington State.

Our work is guided by our core values: caring youth and adult partnerships, strong communities, sustainable land stewardship, education, and good food for all people. 

PROGRAMS

Cultivating Youth

The mission of the Cultivating Youth Program is to grow inspired, self-confident, community-minded youth by offering them leadership opportunities in addressing issues of hunger and poverty in our area.Outcomes for these youth include higher self-esteem, better nutrition, a sense of civic responsibility, and successful high school completion with a secure plan for higher education or meaningful employment.  Participants achieve these outcomes through hard work at the gardens, fieldtrips to local farms, managing their own marketing program, and positive adult-youth partnerships. 

Kitchen Garden Project (KGP)

The mission of the Kitchen Garden Project is to help low-income people to help themselves by becoming home food producers with high yielding vegetable gardens.  We install 100 complete vegetable gardens each year for low-income people either at their homes, as community gardens in low-income communities, or at institutions that serve low-income and disadvantaged people.  This approach to hunger is simple, cost-effective, and empowering. 

HISTORY

In 1993, Richard Doss interviewed Dan Barker in Portland, Oregon about his crazy idea of giving away free vegetable gardens to low-income people.  Inspired by what he heard and saw, Rich began a similar project in the South Sound and in seven years built more than 1300 gardens.  In 1996, Blue Peetz heard a lecture on the power of community gardens in social change and decided to find land and grow food for the local senior center.  Four years later, he and a dedicated group had improved the lives of over 500 youth and seniors through garden-based education, employment, and therapy.  In 2001, the Kitchen Garden Project and Sister Holly Garden Project merged.  Today both projects thrive and evolve within one organization, GRuB.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• 2006 Governor’s Community Health Bowl winner
• Awarded the 2005 Human Rights Award by Thurston Council on Cultural Diversity and Human Rights.
• GRuB’s co-directors were nominated as Champions for Kids by the City of Olympia in 2004.
• Named 2002 Youth Advocate Organization of the Year by Community Youth Services.
• Successfully hosted 6th Annual Rooted In Community National Conference for 130 youth and adults from around the country, focusing on issues of youth empowerment and food justice.
• Since 1993, the Kitchen Garden Project has given over 2,000 gardens to low-income individuals and families.