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.

South Coffeyville, OK

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: South Coffeyville lacked spaces for cultural engagement and healthy food access, leaving older adults isolated and youth disconnected from heritage. To address this, the organization created a year-round community garden using Cherokee Nation heirloom seeds for a Three Sisters planting, adding raised beds, benches and solar lighting. Elders taught youth traditional gardening methods, fostering intergenerational bonds and reducing isolation. Harvests included corn, squash, tomatoes and herbs, and plans for food preservation workshops will extend the impact. At the ribbon-cutting, one attendee called it "a wonderful way for both our elders and youth to work together."

Project description was created using generative AI and then reviewed for accuracy.

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.