Pittsburgh, PA

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: Grounded Strategies transformed a vacant lot in Pittsburgh's Central Hill District into a community garden. The organization relied on what is calls its ReClaim Ambassador model, which connects experts with vulnerable communities to repurpose vacant land and revitalize neighborhoods. To create the Peace, Love and Friendship Garden, the ambassador for this project worked with corporate donors, volunteers and nonprofit partners. Meant to offset the closure of a local grocery store, the garden features 72 raised beds where residents can grow vegetables. Grounded Strategies is now working with partner organization Grow Pittsburgh to create programming for the space.

Providence, RI

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: Amos House, which serves unhoused and unemployed people and those living in poverty, developed a volunteer-managed garden to provide fresh ingredients for the organization's soup kitchen. Amos House installed four raised garden beds and two containers for growing herbs. The organization relied on labor from participants in its carpentry program and planted seeds donated by a local farm. Following construction of the 900-square-foot garden, Amos House recruited 20 volunteers age 50 and older to tend the garden. In the summer of 2019, the garden yielded produce valued at 6,500, which they used to prepare 15,000 meals. Residents of Amos House's shelter programs participate in gardening and harvesting, which project organizers say represented an important social activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gettysburg, SD

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: This project will convert a vacant lot into a downtown community garden. Many older adult residents live in apartments that lack garden areas, so the space will allow them to cultivate home-grown produce.