A Recipe for Community Health

With SNAP-Ed funding set to expire, Washtenaw County risks losing a low-cost, high-impact program that brought nutrition and joy into classrooms, parks, and farmers markets.

If you have a child in the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, you probably know about the “Healthy Schools, Healthy Communities” program. The program provides direct education to K-5 students throughout a five-week program, focusing on food education. Topics include learning about fruits and vegetables, the importance of physical activity, handwashing, honoring food traditions, and many other related subjects. The kids get excited about the Healthy Schools, Healthy Communities programming in a similar way to how they get excited about arts or music programming – a fun break from normal classroom routines, where they try something new.

Each session involves the kids using their bodies, using their brains, and using their mouths. It starts with a “fit bit,” engaging students’ bodies in fun exercise and “getting the wiggles out” before they settle into the brain portion of the day. The program has a special focus on literacy education, utilizing books about food and activities such as kids creating their own menus to reinforce reading, writing, and grammar skills — all while learning about food and nutrition. Finally, each lesson ends with a recipe-based, sensory-based tasting. This provides a fun, low-stakes opportunity to try new foods, allowing kids to use their mouths to explore new tastes.

What you may not know is that all of this programming is a result of SNAP-Ed funding–funding which has recently been drastically reduced, putting the continued existence of programs like these in peril. Danielle Dros is the program lead for SNAP-Ed programs in the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, and she shared with me the broad impact that the program has in the Washtenaw area. The Healthy Schools Healthy Communities program reached about 3,000 students in the area, across thirteen schools and 146 classrooms (in just the last year!). But that program is only one part of the program’s direct education initiatives (which in turn are only one part of the broader program).

In addition to the school year program, there is also a summer “rec connect” program, a physical activity-based program which operates at six sites, including Ypsi library branches and Ypsi Community Schools summer schools. The program is a game-based, six-lesson series that explores a different movement each week, such as hula hoops, jump ropes, or yoga. Each lesson also includes tastings, where students engage in activities such as trying three different kinds of apples and rating them based on their taste.

The last component of the direct education is their Farmers Market Food Navigator program, which partners with the Whitmore Lake Farmers Market every other Sunday. A SNAP-Ed staff member sets up and provides resources to help people understand how to sign up for SNAP, how to use their SNAP benefits, give out food samples, share recipes, and understand what’s in season and how to store produce. (If you’ve been following the other articles in this series, this is the same role that Cassian Lethe plays at the Ypsilanti Farmers Market.)

In addition to direct education initiatives, SNAP-Ed also works on community strategies (formerly known as policy, systems, and environmental change) and indirect education. Some of their work in community strategies has involved helping Whitmore Lake Farmers Market get a card reader to be able to accept SNAP (a major hurdle for small markets), partnering with Superior Township’s Fireman’s Park to improve an underutilized park space, revamping the Ypsi Community Schools wellness policy, partnering with local food pantries to use the Healthy Food Pantry Assessment Tool to evaluate what the pantries are doing well and where there is room for improvement, and supporting with community data collection for the new Ypsilanti Peace Neighborhood Resource Center.

In their partnership with Superior Township, SNAP-Ed staff provided the logistical support to help the township understand what the surrounding neighborhood would like to see in the park. In 2022 and 2023, they knocked on doors and took surveys. After collecting the data, they turned it into a visually appealing and easily readable report, which they provided to the parks and recreation department. The parks department was then able to use the report to ask the township to allocate more funds for the park renovation, and their advocacy was successful. As a result, in 2024, the parks department was able to add a younger kids playground, an older kids playground, benches, outdoor exercise equipment, and a walking trail.

This year, SNAP-Ed again partnered with the Superior Township parks department, as well as the township’s library, to create a story walk on the new walking trail. Story walks combine reading and physical activity by displaying a children’s book, page by page, along an outdoor path. All books used for the story walk are SNAP-Ed approved, allowing kids and their families to learn about healthy food while enhancing their literacy skills and enjoying quality time in nature.

The final component of SNAP-Ed’s community work is its indirect education programs. While direct educational programs focus on reaching kids in schools, the indirect education programs allow SNAP-Ed to have a presence in the community. They attend both school-based and community-based tabling events, such as the upcoming Annual Parkridge Summer Festival/Joe Dulin Community Day in Ypsilanti on August 23rd and the Kite and Rocket Day at Fireman’s Park. When they table, they offer tastings and recipes, information about the programming in schools, and fun swag. They also partner with the CSA Food Navigator Program to table during pickup times for the Argus Farm Stop and Farm at Trinity Health CSA boxes, providing a recipe that features the produce in the CSA box for that week and offering further information about the SNAP-Ed program. This, along with all of their other work, provides resources not only to people who are direct recipients of SNAP benefits, but also to all community members. Programs like SNAP-Ed benefit everyone, including individuals who may never realize they are benefiting from them.

At the end of our interview, Danielle shared that this article feels, in many ways, like a eulogy for the program. The current funding for the program only goes through September 30, 2025. After that, its existence is in peril unless the Michigan Fitness Foundation (which administers SNAP-Ed) can find an alternative source of funding for it. This is the kind of program where a very small dollar amount goes a long way, and Danielle still has hope that the state and/or other national organizations with vested interests in food access will step in to fill the funding gap. Hopefully, Danielle’s dream comes true, and we don’t lose such a valuable program forever.

This post is part of a series by Emma Rose Hardy, a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan and the Rackham Local Food Systems Intern at Growing Hope. The series aims to highlight the essential role that SNAP and other food assistance programs play in the Washtenaw County local food system.

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Food is A Right and Community is Medicine

By Julius Buzzard • May 1, 2026

Beloved community, May has arrived, and Southeast Michigan has exhaled into spring. As seedlings begin to sprout and Mother Earth does her thing, After a long winter of waiting, there is something deep inside each of us that leans toward the light. And I think it’s crucial that we lean into that light after so much darkness. That we lean into what it means to reach towards what we need and deserve, not simply an act of grace, but as a right of every living organism. This spring, I want to lean into the right to food. Sometimes, the most radical ideas are also the simplest. The right to food means every person, regardless of zip code, income, skin color, or the circumstances of their birth, has the inherent right to access sufficient, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. And it doesn’t start at the dinner table. It incorporates the farmer who needs land to grow, the farmworker who deserves a living wage, and the maker who wants to build the food business of their ancestors' dreams. The right to food means that spaces such as the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace and Growing Hope Urban Farm are part of community infrastructure. The right to food is a whole-systems claim that urges us to stop seeing hunger as a distribution issue and instead recognize it as an issue of who is invited to the table. This is not a novel idea. The right to food has been recognized in international law since 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined it as part of every person's right to an adequate standard of living. It was further codified in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which is legally binding for 172 countries. Notably, our country has been missing from that list. While enough food is produced to feed everyone, and still, up to 720 million people experience hunger, and 2.6 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. Today, one in seven residents in Washtenaw County questions where their next meal will come from. This represents a failure of will, not imagination. It’s the result of systems that treat food as a commodity rather than a birthright. But we don’t have to accept that as the finish line. There are multiple states and communities within our country that have codified the right to food, and we’d love for you to join us in advancing and declaring this right in our community. By treating food insecurity as a rights violation rather than a personal failing, we shift the policy debate from political aspiration to human obligation. It’s this shift, from charity to solidarity, that lines the foundation of Growing Hope’s work. Just a few days ago, we sent a group of staff, partners, and volunteers to Lansing to walk through the doors of power and speak with honesty and humility. We talked about what the right to food means on the ground. We talked about what we believe Michigan can do. We advocated for systems that uphold the right to food for every aspect of the food system. Importantly, we left knowing that we are not alone in this. Across the country, community organizers are rallying around this core principle. As one organizer stated, “We need to state the obvious right now, because the systems we relied on are being eroded very actively." We are not growing gardens. We are growing self-determination. We are growing community. We are Growing Hope. I said at the beginning that food is a right, and I believe that with everything in me. Unfortunately, rights don't enforce themselves. They require community to join together, to ensure accountability, and to be a continual reminder of what we are committed to. This is the community we are building. We invest and believe so deeply in this viewpoint for one simple reason, which feels more true now than ever before: community is medicine. Together we share some ailments, but our collective resources are innumerable. And while we don’t know where we’ll end up on the other side of the change and chaos swirling around us, we can be certain that we’ll arrive together. Proximity and hope are foundational building blocks for a community of healing. This is the type of community that demands systems of care that uphold our basic human rights, while sharing its resources to meet our collective needs. Together, we are growing food. We are gathering. We are ensuring the right to food. And we are healing one another through community. We are watching the systems we have long depended on fray at the edges in real time. We are responding, in unison, saying: we are not waiting for permission to be fed. That is the work. Thank you for being part of it. In solidarity, Julius P.S. The right to food is more than a principle. It's a promise we make to one another. You can read our Right to Food Declaration, add your name, and share your story (with a chance to win a $50 gift card) at growinghope.net/righttofood .

Mother Earth is Asking Us to be Present

By Julius Buzzard • April 1, 2026

Beloved community, April arrives the way it always does in Michigan; tentatively at first, then all at once. One morning, the ground is still stubborn and cold, and the next, something is pushing through. We call it Earth Month, but Mother Earth does not need a month. Mother Earth is always working. What Earth Month does, at its best, is return us to attention; to the slow, faithful labor happening beneath our feet, whether we notice or not. This month, I want to talk about that labor. Not just the labor of growing food, but the labor of staying whole while doing this work. The labor of belonging to one another. The labor of grief. Food sovereignty has never been only about food. It has always been about the conditions under which people live; who controls the land, who decides what is grown and for whom, whose hands are trusted to tend it, and whose labor is rendered invisible in the process. When we plant together, across our differences, we practice a different way of being in relationship with the earth and with each other. We are rehearsing the world we are trying to build. This is food sovereignty at its fullest: not a policy framework alone, but a practice of restoration. Of the land, yes. But also of people. Of community. Of self. Earth Month, then, is not just a celebration of the natural world. It is an invitation to remember that we are part of it; that the health of our soil and the health of our souls are not separate questions. This spring, I am carrying something heavier than usual. And I suspect many of you are too. Our community lost Melvin Parson. And that loss has settled into me like the coming of spring here in Michigan: quietly, then suddenly, everywhere. Melvin was a farmer, a visionary, and a neighbor. Through We The People Opportunity Farm, he built real pathways of belonging and dignity. He understood that food sovereignty is not only about growing food; it is about restoring people to possibility. Melvin planted seeds that will outlive all of us. In the soil and in the lives he helped rebuild. Rest in power, Melvin. We will keep tending what you planted. But grief does not arrive alone. And I think we need to name that. Something has been accumulating in many of us. The anxiety of not knowing whether your rent will hold, whether the program keeping your mother's medication affordable will survive the next budget cycle, whether the news tomorrow brings another cut, another threat, another loss. The weight of watching war unfold on a screen while packing your child's lunch. The low hum of uncertainty has grown so constant that many of us have stopped recognizing it as something being done to us. Mental health in our communities is rarely one dramatic moment. It is the slow erosion of the conditions that makes life feel possible. And right now, those conditions are under pressure from every direction. We are not imagining it. It is real. And it deserves to be named. I do not want to move past this moment too quickly, because I think it is asking something of us. Those of us who work in food systems, in community organizing, in the daily labor of trying to repair what has been broken, we carry a particular weight. The need is constant. The resources are not. The work is relational, which means every loss is personal. Every family facing hunger has a name. Every policy that fails our community lands in someone's body. We are not separate from the communities we serve. We are one of them. And that means the strains of this moment: economic precarity, political hostility, grief, isolation, and the relentless demand to do more with less all live within us. I have been thinking about what it means to tend ourselves the way Mother Earth tends herself. To acknowledge that fallow seasons are not failures. That rest is not retreat. That asking for help is not a weakness, but the most honest form of community care. Mother Earth is not asking us to be strong; she’s asking us to be present. This April, I am inviting Growing Hope's community into that same practice. Tend your plot, yes, but also tend your people. Check on your neighbors. Come to the farm not just to grow food, but to be held by the community. Let the soil remind you that transformation is slow, and real, and worth it. We are in this together. And together is the only way through. In solidarity, Julius P.S. If this month is weighing on you, you don't have to carry it alone. The NAMI HelpLine offers free, confidential one-on-one support, mental health information, and resources — available Monday through Friday, 10am–10pm ET. Call 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or text NAMI to 62640. And if you need a reason to get outside and be with people, join us on April 11, 10am–1pm for our Spring Seedling Distribution.

Downtown Ypsi Deserves This

By Julius Buzzard • March 27, 2026

Beloved community, Last season, organizers of all sizes hosted 168 events at the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace, from mutual aid distributions and cultural gatherings to health outreach and food policy conversations. These moments reflect how we steward shared resources to maximize good and meet multiple community needs at once. At the heart of it all is the Ypsilanti Farmers Market itself. If you’ve spent any time at the market, you know that it’s never just been a place to shop. It’s a place to linger. To listen. To organize. To feed one another, body and spirit. Together, we are building a food ecosystem where everyone has access to fresh produce and where advocacy, mutual aid, and belonging intersect. That was especially clear this year when our community faced a sudden gap in food access. When early federal funding shifts threatened nutrition dollars, our community didn’t wait. Together, we rapidly designed and launched the Ypsi SNAP Gap Program, a locally powered response that ensured hundreds of local families could continue to access food. As we move through spring, your support sustains this work; keeping vendor fees low, strengthening food access programs, and maintaining the MarketPlace as a space for belonging. Every gift sustains a place to live, organize, and nourish one another. With deep gratitude, Julius Buzzard Executive Director P.S. Your early spring support ensures we’re ready to respond when our community needs it most.

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