2025 Teen Leadership Afterschool Program Highlights

Thursday, May 22 marked the last day of the after school program for our Teen Leadership Program. We wanted to take a moment to share some of the highlights from the past eight months and recognize all of the hard work done by our young food justice leaders: Tuula Martinez, Eli Harris, Josie Smith, Jaylah Cotton, Sienna Troy, and Nick Corvera-Garay!

Deepening Knowledge

The fall and winter months on the farm make way for many workshops in our Teen Leadership Program! This year, the majority of our meetings were youth-facilitated, and each of our teens planned and facilitated their own workshop relating to Food Justice, Cooking, or Community Organizing. They shared family recipes in their cooking workshops, talked about the effects of colonization on our food systems, and discussed power mapping in community change work. In the fall, we visited UM Campus Farm and the Community Food Forest at Leslie Park to learn from other food growers in our area and their farming practices. We prepared for the growing season at the Growing Hope Urban Farm with workshops about plant families, companion planting, and crop planning!

Community Engagement

This school year, our Teen Leadership Program planned and presented at least one free community engagement event every month! They hosted monthly Food Sovereignty Film Screenings and discussions with some of their favorite films being Seed: The Untold Story and Gather. They prepared and sold handmade tea bags and honey at the Ypsi Farmers Market. Each of our teens made their own zine for the first Ypsi Zine Jamboree at the Freighthouse. They hosted a public workshop on corn nixtamalization, and processed corn they grew last summer into fresh tortillas. In collaboration with the Washtenaw County Youth Commissioners, they planned and hosted Fighting Food Insecurity: One Bowl of Ramen at a Time event at our Urban Farm with the support of FedUp, Food Gatherers, and The Farm at Trinity. The goal of this event was to educate folks about food insecurity in our community and provide an easy way to elevate a simple meal like ramen with fresh veggies and edible weeds! They did informative tabling events at YCS schools, the Ypsi Library, and other community events. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment was the launch of the Growing Hope Seed Library! Our Teen Leadership Program saved and packaged seeds from our farm, sorted thousands of seed donations, organized varieties alphabetically, and planned a launch party for our permanent Seed Library! The Seed Library is open to all and is located at the Growing Hope Urban Farm. They revived their own Instagram account– you can follow at @growinghope_teens to get a first hand look at all their work!

Seeding, planting, and growing

The Teen Leadership Program manages three of the growing areas on our Urban Farm: the Children’s Garden, the Sharing Garden, and The Oasis. The teens are responsible for crop planning, seed starting, and planting the beds in each of these areas totaling over 20 garden beds! The teens worked together to make crop plans by calculating seed starting dates, transplant dates, how many plants per square foot, and creating cold and hot crop rotation plans. They soil blocked, started seeds, and planted all of the cold crops for the 3 garden areas which you can see growing now at our Urban Farm! They will continue to follow their crop plans all summer long to know when to harvest cold crops and plant more hot crops. Harvested food will be given out for free in our Community Produce Cart and also used in cooking lessons in our Summer Teen Leadership Program!

We are incredibly proud of this group of young people and grateful for their hard work, commitment to the community and the local food system, and the perspective and joy they bring to our organization! In June our current group of teens will be joined by six new teen crew members for a summer full of learning, growing, and leading!

< Older Post

Newer Post >

Nutrition and the Right to Thrive

By Julius Buzzard • February 26, 2026

Beloved community, March is National Nutrition Month, and across the country, we’re told to read labels more closely, count nutrients more carefully, and “eat real foods.” But nutrition is not a trend cycle; it is a question of power. I invite you to join me in curiosity and ask: Who has access to what’s being recommended? Who can afford the “real” food being celebrated? Who grows it, and who gets paid? Are we treating illness, or are we transforming the conditions that produce it? Health outcomes matter, but health equity goes further. Health equity asks why certain neighborhoods have higher rates of diabetes in the first place. It asks why fresh food feels exceptional in some zip codes and ordinary in others. It asks why farmers struggle to survive while healthcare systems expand. If we do not address land access, procurement policy, and economic extraction, then “eat real” risks becoming a quiet moral judgment instead of a structural commitment. Michigan once modeled real structural commitment through 10 Cents a Meal for Michigan's Kids & Farms ; matching school dollars to buy Michigan-grown produce and making local food standard in cafeterias. It strengthened children’s health, stabilized farmers, and shifted institutional purchasing habits. This year, the program was not funded. And as a result, students miss the chance to build lifelong food memories rooted close to home. And still, we are not retreating. Together, we are building a foundation of generational health. Generational health is the long game. It is the work of ensuring that today’s third grader doesn’t just eat a fresh apple; but grows up expecting apples from Michigan orchards in their cafeteria. It is ensuring that a teen doesn’t just volunteer at the market; but understands zoning laws, farm bills, and supply chains well enough to challenge them. This is the foundation of our theory of change. We build generational health by shaping habits early and reinforcing them often; through initiatives like our Teen Leadership Program, where young people gain the skills and critical lens to navigate and influence the food system; through field trips to our urban farm and incubator kitchen, where learning is rooted in soil; through Farm to School programming that normalizes local procurement; and through Power of Produce (POP) Club, where children practice agency by choosing fresh food for themselves. This is how we shift from reactive nutrition work to regenerative nutrition culture. We do this by pairing conversations about Food as Medicine, dietary guidelines, and eating real foods, with: An insistence that farmers are part of the prescription. Guidelines that align with affordability and access. Understanding that real foods need to be reachable, culturally meaningful, and dignified. Nutrition is not simply about what’s on a plate. It is about who has the right to thrive. This National Nutrition Month, I invite you to see nutrition not as an individual burden, but as a collective project that treats fresh food not as charity, but as infrastructure. We are cultivating a community where children expect fresh produce, where farmers are stable and respected, and where health is inherited as legacy. That is generational health. And that is the future we are growing together. In solidarity, Julius P.S. Check out the FoodCorps Policy Action Map or sign up for our Farm to School Newsletter if you’re interested in building generational health.

Queen Mother Audley Moore & Reparations Through Land and Food

By Julius Buzzard • February 25, 2026

Long before reparations entered mainstream conversation, Queen Mother Audley Moore was clear: justice required land, resources, and self-determination; not symbolic gestures. A descendant of enslaved people, Moore spent decades organizing for reparations rooted in material reality. She understood that stolen labor was tied to stolen land, and that food insecurity was not accidental; it was engineered . Moore advocated for land redistribution, cooperative economics, and community-controlled food systems as necessary steps toward repair. Her vision aligns directly with modern food sovereignty movements: returning control of food, land, and labor to the people most harmed by their removal . This is not history; it is instruction. Growing Hope’s work exists within this continuum. From urban farming to food hubs, from youth leadership to market access, we are building the kinds of systems Moore demanded, systems that repair harm by restoring agency. Food sovereignty is reparations in practice. And the work is unfinished.

Georgia Gilmore & The Club From Nowhere

By Julius Buzzard • February 18, 2026

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when formal fundraising was surveilled and criminalized, Georgia Gilmore organized something deceptively simple: a kitchen network . Known as The Club From Nowhere , Gilmore and other Black women sold pies, cakes, and home-cooked meals to quietly raise money for the movement. Their anonymity was protection. Their food was infrastructure. For over a year, as the boycott stretched on, these funds paid for carpools, gas, and daily survival. While history often centers on speeches and marches, Gilmore reminds us that revolutions are sustained behind the scenes by those who feed people, organize logistics, and keep the lights on. Her kitchen was a site of resistance. Her recipes were tools of liberation. At Growing Hope, we honor this lineage every time we invest in food entrepreneurs, incubator kitchens, and cooperative models. When food businesses are community-rooted, they do more than generate income; they fuel movements . Never underestimate what food can do. And never forget who has always been doing the work.

ALL ARTICLES