Updates

Happy New Year!

While there is no doubt that 2020 was a year of challenge, heartache, uncertainty, loss, and disruption, there were also silver linings to acknowledge, as there were so many beautiful displays of kindness and collaboration.

In a Fall 2020 newsletter, we explored the nuances of the Three Rs: Relief, Rehabilitation, and Restoration. (https://urbanseeds.org/the-three-rs-relief-rehabilitation-restoration). There has long been impactful Relief work occurring in the Evansville area by several nonprofit organization and faith-based groups; the pandemic invited us all, as a community, to see the troubling reality of food insecurity, made more evident by supply chain challenges and new joblessness. There have always been hungry families in our area, yet due to the sudden increase in families in financial distress, it was the pandemic that highlighted this bleak truth of disparity.

Urban Seeds’ Board members, staff, and volunteers have consistently advocated for Food Justice, related to accessing nourishing food. As well, we are committed to creating and engaging in Rehabilitation and Restorative initiatives, such as our Meal Plan, Shop, and Cook on a Budget, and our Nourish Community Food Buying Club.

Our focus for 2021 is to lean heavy into Rehabilitation efforts as we endeavor to find solid footing in Restoration programming, the details of which are:

Meal Planning, Shopping, and Cooking on a Budget

• Many of our neighbors have become disconnected to the task of cooking a meal from scratch, which could be a time management challenge due to a busy schedule, or a lack of modeling from their own family life. And of course, when access to fresh foods is limited due to zip code or financial constraints, this further diminishes the likelihood of familiarity of meal planning and shopping, let alone cooking on a budget.
• Providing resources and support that increase knowledge of how-to meal plan is the first step towards an improved likelihood that fresh foods will be incorporated into family meals. This is not an all or nothing situation – adding one planned, fresh dinner per week is a positive step. It is vital that the dignity and empowerment of each family member is supported as we walk side-by-side in our education journey.
• It is imperative that we at Urban Seeds keep in mind the power of food preferences and the availability of those foods.
• When a weekly meal plan is developed—often a rotation of family favorites over the course of a month—then we can shift the focus to cost-effective shopping, followed by efficient preparation of fresh meal ingredients that can be used throughout the week. 

Nourish

• The Community Food Buying Club is a collaborative program created in response to a lack of full-service grocery stores in large tracts of the Evansville area. Leadership for Nourish is shared by Urban Seeds, Purdue Extension, Healthy Communities Partnership, the Promise Zone, and numerous community partner organizations.
• We purchase bulk foods at wholesale pricing – pricing that we then pass on to our members. We also offer “boxes” which are essentially a meal kit or a theme box, such as a pasta dinner box or a breakfast box. Members shop on our online grocery store with orders being fulfilled every other Thursday. Grocery bags are currently being delivered to the front porch of our members, as the pandemic has interfered with our delivery to partner agencies.
• We have one staff person, a paid coordinator, who works 8 hours per week. We are preparing to scale up the number of Nourish family memberships, and will be hiring another staff member to facilitate this increase in volume.
• A difficulty has been the lack of ability to meet our members in person for the education class piece to Nourish. Increasing access to nourishing whole foods is important, yes, but as important is the teaching piece so that our members are able to integrate those grocery items into their weekly meal planning. The above-mentioned Meal Plan, Shopping, and Cooking on a budget is a signature element of Nourish and one that we eagerly anticipate resuming once we are able to safely gather again.

Fund raising for the expansion of Nourish as well as resuming in-person education classes is a necessity to augment funds we receive from Welborn Baptist Foundation. Please consider a new year donation, here: https://urbanseeds.org/donate 

I welcome the opportunity to speak to you with more depth in the coming weeks and months – either one-on-one or to your service group or to your worksite colleagues. Please reach out so that we, together, can share the mission and vision of Urban Seeds and Nourish Our Community.

Warm regards,

Robin Mallery, Director

During times of change and growth, it is easy to get caught up in the planning, the excitement, and the transition details. Urban Seeds (US) may have seemed quiescent over this past year+, and in some ways that has been true. We have not had a strong presence tabling at community events for instance, or talking about local food systems in a group venue. The good news is that the Evansville Area Food Council (EAFC), which is an extension of US, picked up some of that work. And now, it is the EAFC that has gone quiet…

The Back Story

In mid-2015, US was approached by the Welborn Baptist Foundation to assess our capacity to develop an area Food Council. At the time, the Board of Directors of US was down to 3 members. Due to routine life experiences of babies being born, professional obligations, and moving out of town, our Board had dwindled from a robust dozen members to three. Two of the three of us were quite busy with professional and family commitments, so that we were challenged to maintain a meaningful connection to our community, let alone grow our Board members.

Thus, when the Welborn Baptist Foundation reached out with the inquiry of our next steps, we readily agreed to pursue the development of an area Food Council. Welborn generously provided funding for training on the basics of Food Councils for the then-President of the Board and myself, as well as funds to initiate the Council. In January 2016, we convened the first EAFC meeting. Approximately 50 community members were invited whose work or volunteerism touched on access to healthy food; we included educators, chefs, school nutrition directors, non-profit directors of shelters, after-school programs, the Food Bank and food pantries, and business leaders. This group identified community strengths and opportunities regarding food access and health, and we agreed to continue to meet monthly, which we did for all of 2016.

Projects

We immediately identified a “low-hanging fruit” project for which we enthusiastically provided support: the Community Wellness Coordinators at Purdue Extension had just begun a Food Rescue pilot program in a local elementary school, for which we helped to study regulations and the further opportunities for change in this area.

Along the lines of mitigating food waste, we were thrilled to partner with the Change Maker/GAP students at the University of Evansville as they sought solutions to the excessive amount of food being tossed into the trash in their school cafeteria. We provided mentorship for sorting through regulatory issues, and were very proud of their successes as they worked with the cafeteria vendor to disseminate leftover foods within the network of shelters and pantries. As well, they received top honors at the presentation of their project to their peers and other community mentors!

Additionally, over the course of that year, we were able to provide a small grant to a program being piloted at Patchwork Central, called Fruits and Veggies Rx, which facilitates access to fresh produce by utilizing a “prescription” from a physician.

Taking it to the next level of non-profit excellence

As the EAFC members continued to brainstorm opportunities and partnerships within our community that would further our Mission and Vision, we were once again fortunate to be approached by Welborn Baptist Foundation with the opportunity to be mentored by a consultant who specializes in non-profits with a Social Justice mission and vision. We’ve been meeting with JD Levy and Associates for several months now, focusing on creating a strong foundation for success in our organization. As a 501c3, US is eligible to apply for grants, both from local, state and federal entities, including government grants. These grants will allow us to fund programs of great impact to our community, those that would indeed support the health and well-being of our community related to access to healthy food, while supporting a vibrant local foods economy. Stay tuned as we continue to explore opportunities!

Transition

To that end, the EAFC has been folded into Urban Seeds. Our current efforts have taken us back to the basics: we are working with our mentor/consultant on Board Development, which includes job descriptions and the expectations for Board members, a Theory of Change schematic, a database of our current and future partners, writing our story in a way that is compelling, and timeline for task accomplishment. This may not be as exciting as the actual projects with which we intend to engage in the coming months, but this foundational Board Development is paramount to the long-term success of US, and indeed, any non-profit. We are grateful for the generosity of Welborn Baptist Foundation for supporting us in this manner.

We are seeking to mindfully grow the Board, with the essential criteria for consideration as a member being a passion for Food Justice – be that delving into food policy, connecting with farmers to discuss a robust local food economy, creating meaningful partnerships with other non-profits or businesses that have a Social Justice focus, fundraising, to name a few of the opportunities. Please visit our website; we would love to hear from you, to answer your questions, and to meet with you in person to discuss your interest in US as we endeavor to create a meaningful presence in southwest Indiana.