Slow Food NYC's Urban Harvest Farm Compost and Community Programs

Urban Harvest Farm at Ujima in East New York is an urban farm community resource operated by Slow Food NYC during the growing season. This project is to expand our composting efforts, high school internships, and community event programs. We offer free educational programming for children and families in the community and serve as a hub for summer high school internships, educating children about where food comes from, and how it affects their own health and the planet, empowering them to act as positive environmental actors for themselves and the surrounding community. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Slow Food NYC's Urban Harvest program shifted gears, partnering with local community centers to donate and distribute fresh, culturally-sensitive produce. In 2022, as inflation continues to impact food insecurity, Slow Food NYC continues in its mission to support the community through offering food production and distribution alongside educational programs.

This year, your support will allow us to broaden our composting efforts within the community, develop more youth and family education opportunities, offer no-cost, fresh produce, and increase biodiversity at our farm by helping us plant a variety of new seeds.

With your generous support, we plan to:

• Expand our high school internship program by increasing staff members. Currently, we have one farm manager that supervises the interns, and we would like to add a Mentor, Supervisor, and Educator to the team, so we can provide a more comprehensive curriculum on nutrition, sustainability, and garden care. 
• Produce community events in the spring through fall seasons for our East New York neighbors. We will use these events to engage with the community near our Urban Harvest Farm at Ujima, promote our composting program, and highlight the garden’s resources (such as no-cost, fresh produce) available to them. 
• Increase our composting efforts in East New York by helping us to develop and promote food scrap drop-off events at our farm. With additional funding, we will have a greater capacity to track food waste that we turn into compost and prevent it from going to landfill.
• Increase biodiversity at our farm by helping us to plant a variety of new seeds including those designated as Slow Food Ark of Taste plants. 

• By October 1: Plan for fall community events and start hiring efforts to fill out the garden team
• By October 15: Provide the first fall stipend to the head gardener 
• By November 1: Hold the first community event to promote composting and distribute produce
• By November 15: Provide a second fall stipend to the head gardener
• By December 15: Hold a second community event to promote composting and distribute product

Slow Food NYC is the New York City chapter of Slow Food, a grassroots organization working towards a food system that is good, clean, and fair for all. We've operated our Urban Harvest Farm at Ujima in East New York since 2010, and typically host a tuition-free structured learning experience where neighborhood children annually participate in learning about sustainable growing practices and nutrition education. Last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched a no-cost food distribution program to community partners in our East New York neighborhood. This New York City neighborhood has the highest concentration of fast-food restaurants in all five boroughs, and rates of both obesity and food insecurity are higher in this community compared to city-wide averages. Urban Harvest Farm at Ujima aims to provide appealing and easily accessible alternatives to the multitude of fast-food options by reinforcing our garden as a well-known and welcoming destination for healthy, nourishing food and nutrition education. We are actively working to further remove barriers to access by distributing our fresh, garden-grown produce across multiple community sites.