Growing Chefs

Growing Chefs! Chefs for Children’s Urban Agriculture (GC) gets kids excited about good, healthy food. Their two main goals are to provide an avenue for chefs and growers to engage in the community to support food sustainability and to encourage the development and growth of urban agriculture. In their Classroom Gardening Program, chef volunteers are paired with elementary school classrooms (grades 1-3) to give students hands-on experience growing and cooking their own food.

In their first year of SVP funding, GC proved to be successful in three ways: serving a record number of children (1290), mobilizing a record number of chef and restaurant volunteers (145), and generating the highest number of SVP volunteer participants out of any Investee (17).

SVP’s 2016 grant will support:

• Further increase number of students served
• Further increase number of volunteers engaged
• Successfully deliver programming in both fall and spring
• Continue to develop additional relationships with restaurants
• Further pilot our Train the Trainer Model
• Further expand our ‘Franchise’ Communities program
• Continue to develop a sustainable recurring fund development model

https://vimeo.com/139630967

SVP Grant Commitment: $100,000 over three years (2014-2016) with generous Co-Funding from the SpencerCreo Foundation, the Francis Family Foundation, and the BPS Wealth Management Group.

Executive Director: Helen Stortini
SVP Lead Partner: Nick Bedford