The Garden Ambassador Program (GAP) will provide opportunities for three “garden ambassadors” to build critical urban gardening skills, deepen knowledge of urban agriculture careers, and receive $1,000 to help maintain the 2,500-square-foot growing space over 16 weeks at the Kelly Street Garden.

Kelly Street Garden has always been propelled by the desire to promote food and economic justice in the South Bronx. We’ve grown and distributed hundreds of pounds of produce to our neighbors—for free—through weekly summer Farm Stands, cooking workshops, and other events.  We’ve done all of this mostly through volunteers and in spite of being in the poorest national congressional district and lowest-ranked county by health in New York State.

With GAP, we'll elevate our work by providing skill-building opportunities for unemployed/underemployed neighbors, award stipends to finally acknowledge the value they create, and grow more fresh produce. Ambassadors will work 4 hours per week May 15 – August 25, 2017 alongside the Garden Manager to strengthen several aspects of garden management, from planting to measuring outcomes. We will develop performance goals with Ambassadors and hold ourselves accountable to realizing them through weekly task lists, supervision, and a written and verbal feedback. We also hope to raise enough to take Ambassadors on three field trips to learn about other organizations and jobs that help improve the NYC food landscape (e.g. urban gardeners and educators, healthy food retailers, chefs). Finally, we’ll use surveys to measure GAP’s impacts, which we believe will include: strengthening Ambassadors’ incomes and arsenal of skills, and delivering a robust program they’d recommend to others to become better healthy food advocates.