Fare Harvest community and learning gardens exist to provide:
access to free, organic, local produce for all who wish to harvest
living laboratories for learning
natural sanctuaries to enrich our quality of life and community
At the core of Rooted in Education is our passion for education and creating opportunities that open the doors and cultivate the passion within a child for who they want to be and how they connect with the world.
In 2016 our board came together with individuals representing teachers, business owners and parents who were dedicated to the idea that all children should have access to enrichment education opportunities. As such, prior to 2020, our Empowering Enrichment educational grants were our primary focus. During the shut down, at-school enrichment programs came to a hault. With no idea when programs would come back and, even if they did, what the educational landscape would look like, we began to consider how we as an organization could pivot in a way that aligned with our passion.
What we observed was that there were two very real needs that schools were being called on to meet: transformation in the delivery of education and the hurdles of food distribution on a massive scale. We experienced in a very public way the reality of the stress and anxiety that many of our neighbors faced to fill their pantries and refrigerators and the cataclysmic impact that it had on the children who depend on those food programs to eat - many of which may be recipients of our educational grants.
What began as a vision for a network of gardens to provide hyper-local fresh produce for our community has evolved to immersive educational spaces where we plant seeds for education, nourishment and connection to our living world.Fare Harvest community gardens symbolize the innate potential within each child, and dedicates space for educational paradigms that link learners to themselves and the world around them.