Growing Home
Growing Home envisions a thriving, healthy, and equitable community for all. In partnership with the community, Growing Home advances equity in food, housing, parenting education, and lifelong stability to create lasting change for the future.
About:
Growing Home works towards food access and justice through our food pantry, community garden, community organizing and advocacy efforts related to food justice. Growing Home’s food pantry is open five days/week from 10 am-12 pm, supplying participants with a 3-day supply of fresh, healthy, and culturally relevant food. Growing Home utilizes a choice food distribution model where participants select the items that best meet the needs of their families. In 2021, GH distributed 686,727 pounds of food to 1,613 unduplicated households. The food pantry also distributed 69,064 diapers and 4,902 hygiene products.
Growing Home also sponsors El Jardín de Fé y Esperanza, a community garden that is tended by a dedicated team of over thirty volunteers and community members. In 2021, the garden yielded over 2,000 pounds of produce that was redistributed to neighbors and to GH’s food pantry.
Lastly, Growing Home’s Community Organizing Taskforce, a coalition of participants, volunteers, staff, and community members has identified the surrounding food desert as a key issue, following the closure of a number of supermarkets in the area in recent years. This group is building a community-led campaign to further alleviate the food desert’s impact on area residents. The campaign has taken the following steps:
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Conducted extensive community outreach and surveys to understand the impact of local supermarket closures and identify potential solutions.
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Acquired an understanding about the root causes of food deserts and how other organizations have approached this issue.
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Met with representatives from allies such as the City of Westminster, Adams County, Tri-County Health Department, Maiker Housing Partners, ECPAC, and Mile High Connects to solicit input and garner support for the community-led campaign Based on these steps, the taskforce is now exploring the idea of establishing a food co-op to address both food insecurity and a lack of community wealth building opportunities.
Growing Home is located in Westminster and serves folks from across the metro Denver, with a strong focus on the north Metro Denver area.
The partnership with FIC has been a critical in that they have been a thought partner and provider of resources for our food access and justice work. They have contributed funding and key expertise as we learn more about local and national efforts to address food insecurity. They have supported our efforts in the food pantry, community garden, and food justice campaign.
