Advocates for Urban Agriculture – $5,000 – The support from CHIditarod will go directly to growing AUA’s impact on populations that struggle with healthy food access. The impact is two-fold: a larger production of healthy food for the community and economic development of programs that get that food into the hands of Chicagoans. AUA’s training initiative will ultimately help farmers access the tools they need to more successfully do what they do best – grow food that will increase their prosperity and that of their communities.
Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm – $1,000 – Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm is a community urban agriculture site managed by the Bronzeville Alliance and sponsored by NeighborSpace. One year ago, the Bronzeville Urban Site was an empty lot. Today, Bronzeville Alliance has facilitated community construction of garden beds and a hoop house, paving the way for successful crop production in 2018. This farm is a community anchor, securing long-term residents in the neighborhood through home-grown social connection. This community farm’s mission is to bring people from different income levels and backgrounds together through shared neighborhood effort.
Dignity Diner – $5,000 – Dignity Diner is a local ministry that offers a free three course meal to community members every Tuesday evening. Holy Covenant United Methodist Church—alongside volunteers from the community—have been serving the hungry and the homeless in the Lincoln Park/Lakeview neighborhood since 1992. Over the last 27 years, more than 60,000 meals have been served at Dignity Diner. The cost of food service at Dignity Diner averages $300 a week, including food, supplies, and staff— the grant from CHIditarod would provide more than 16 weeks of high quality meals to local guests.
Figeroa Wu Foundation – $5,000 – The Figueroa Wu Foundation supports groups like the UI Health Pilsen Food Pantry, which opened in January 2008 and serves vulnerable Chicagoans by reducing immediate food insecurity. In as few as nine months, Figueroa Wu has served thousands of people. UI Health Pilsen Food Pantry will use their grant to train more volunteers, increase their food storage capacity, and increase the number of people served.
Gardeneers – $4,000 – Gardeneers is making an impact across Chicago Public Schools. This grant will increase the amount of produce grown for farm stands by expanding the production area of 25 school gardens. Half of the money will be used to physically expand these gardens, covering lumber, soil, mulch, seeds and seedlings. The other part will be used to purchase materials needed for farm stands, such as tables, chairs, shade tents, display baskets, informational signage, recipe cards, and flyers for community recruitment.
Holsten Human Capital Development – $5,000 – Holsten Human Capital Development currently serves 3,500 households in 15 Chicagoland communities in addition to Riverdale and Joliet. This grant is supporting their Riverwalk Heal food pantry, housed in a space recently vacated by the Loving Word Ministries Food Bank in the Riverwalk Homes public housing complex in Joliet. Holsten Human Capital Development stocks the shelves for distribution for the pantry’s Thursday food distribution and emergency food requests.
New Eclipse Community Alliance – $3,000 – New Eclipse Community Alliance offers food assistance through a client model, allowing people seeking services to choose for themselves what products they receive. This makes stocking easier for the pantry, affords the people served dignity and control, limits food waste, and allows the program to tailor the help received to fit each unique situation. This funding opportunity will help sustain the food pantry, which serves 54 households and 174 individual clients monthly.
Peterson Garden Project – $2,000 – Since Peterson Garden Project began with a single Pop-Up Victory Garden in 2010, growing food specifically for neighbors in need has been a priority of their Grow2Give program. Over the past nine years, they have trained volunteer gardeners and worked closely with local nutrition partners to grow fresh food just for their clients – our neighbors. Each year, our Grow2Give volunteer gardeners grow, harvest, wash, package, and deliver an average of 2,500 pounds of fruits, vegetables, and herbs for our neighborhood partners: Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park, Inspiration Café in Uptown, Lincoln Square Friendship Center and First Slice Pie Café in Albany Park, North Part Friendship Center in North Park, and Care for Real in Edgewater. That’s 10,000 servings of fresh food for people in our communities.
Angelic Organics Learning Center – Angelic Organics Learning Center builds sustainable local food and farm systems through experiential education and training programs in partnership with rural and urban people. They will be using their grant money for the ‘The Eat to Live Project,” addressing critical food system issues in the neighborhood around growing sites. The Incubator Farm in this project will address the scarcity of locations for new urban farmers to launch businesses on Chicago’s south side, low-income areas.
Common Pantry – Common Pantry was established in 1967 and is Chicago’s oldest continuously run food pantry providing emergency food on Chicago’s North Side while addressing the root causes of food insecurity and poverty. Their grant funds will help support the expansion of their food distribution program for the 2018. As of July 1, 2017 Common Pantry added a distribution day each week and expanded their territory to serve more needy households, as two food pantries in the area recently closed.
Plant Chicago – Plant Chicago seeks to change the way cities develop the critical infrastructure—waste, water, energy, and food access—that will support an increasingly urbanized population. Funding from the CHIditarod Foundation will help expand cooking and nutrition education offerings, give incentives to low-income families to make shopping at their farmer’s market more affordable, and integrate community needs and culturally appropriate offerings into our current farmers market and cooking education programming.
South Merrill Community Gardens – The South Merrill Community Garden memorializes Troy Law, a former student of O’Keefe Elementary School, who died as a result of domestic violence. The garden serves as a counterweight and positive influence in a neighborhood that has been impacted by gun, gang and drug-related violence. They will using funding for their Young Growers Program, where students from O’Keefe will become seed to table gardeners. They will learn seed starting and gardening, planting garden management and maintenance, and participate in a harvest to table cooking class.
The Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance (GPCA), graciously thanked the CHIditarod Foundation for its support of their efforts to address the need for fresh produce in our local neighborhoods of East and West Garfield Park, which are known food deserts within the City of Chicago. The $2,500 grant awarded to GPCA by the CHIditarod Foundation was instrumental to their two main work objectives: 1) growing and donating produce to immediately address the need for access to healthy foods, and 2) educating, training and supporting local gardeners to grow fresh vegetables to feed their community over the long term.
“We also utilized the GPCA greenhouse – a warm, sheltered environment – to grow seedlings for the community over the winter months. GPCA’s Greenhouse Coordinator planned and started the seedlings and scheduled the volunteer shifts to care for the seedlings beginning in mid-February. This year, we have already provided more than 1,000 seedlings to the Garfield Park Garden Network and other gardens who reached out to us with a need for starter plants. We expect to provide at least another 500 warm season seedlings to these gardens in mid-May. We are also providing seed potatoes and seed starts for onions and sweet potatoes that are better started in specialized production. Additionally, all of the seedlings grown here at the Garfield Park Conservatory are nurtured to provide produce for the community. We will harvest produce for the Neighborhood Market Days (2nd Saturdays and following Thursdays, June-October) as well as mid-month for the local food pantries. Last summer, GPCA was able to donate more than 1,000 pounds of produce to the community. With an earlier start to this season, we hope to increase the amount of produce we can contribute over the next five months. GPCA will be tracking that number throughout the growing season and will update the CHIditarod Foundation at the close of this season’s distribution. ”
Two Experimental Station staff members were central to the project: our 61 st Street Farmers Market Manager, who coordinated the project, and our Finance Administrator (an avid crockpot user), who was our Chef Instructor, providing the crockpot class instruction. Coordinating with the JPT apartments management staff, the 61 st Street Farmers Market Manager secured the JPT community kitchen to hold the cooking classes, which were scheduled for Wednesday, January 25, February 1 and February 8. Our Market Manager purchased 25 crockpots, 25 knives and 51 cutting boards for the project. With outreach assistance from JPT management, 22 very enthusiastic participants signed up for the classes, where they learned how to prepare 7 different recipes.
As a result of the success of the Crockpot Project, Experimental Station will be developing additional cooking classes—including crockpot cooking—for the Jackson Park Terrace residents. Again, we are grateful to CHIditarod Foundation for providing the opportunity to undertake this pilot project.
Their $5,00 grant also paid for building materials and labor construction costs associated with the raised beds. To ensure healthful vegetables are grown in the new beds, we purchased landscape barrier cloth (to block out any existing toxins in the Chicago topsoil) and organic soil from lake street supply. They have added additional rain barrels and a compost system to be more self-reliant and better serve its own fertilization needs and once again demonstrate environmental best practices for the community.
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Mark Grutza, CHIdiot racer, and now a CHIditarod Foundation Board Member, remembers coming into Chiditarod as a new racer and realizing that if they wanted to win, they’d have to go big. Here’s how they did it…
An experienced Chiditarod Master Judge, who is also an award-winning bribe creator, provides some tips for those new to the bribe aspect of race day.