GRuB (Garden Raised Bounty)

Program Type: 
Farm Based
Grade Level/Age Group: 
High School
Number of Individuals Program Serves: 
100
Year Founded: 
1996
About the Program: 

GRuB grows healthy food, people, and communities. We inspire positive personal and community change by bringing people together around food and agriculture. We do this by partnering with youth and people with low-incomes to create empowering individual and community food solutions, and offering tools and trainings to help build a just and sustainable food system.

The GRuB School model is a collaboration among multiple community organizations and educational institutions. It eliminates educational disparities for low-income and disengaged students and raises public awareness around issues of food security and sustainability. Our youth development model connects students with hands-on science and community service opportunities that increase self-esteem, learning, and achievement of the individual youth while positively impacting local communities.

Students earn credits and are re-engaged in school and a healthy life by participating in agriculture-based service-learning activities and are supported in reaching academic goals and planning for postsecondary opportunities. Beginning with stipend-based summer employment-training and transitioning to a half-day Career Technical Education school program, students apply academic-year learning to local food security work either growing food for their own cafeteria and/or growing food for people in need. Our curriculum is infused with lessons on ecological farming practices and their favorable environmental impacts. Students develop a deeper understanding of soil and its relationship to sustainable food production. Students help develop the farm’s soil management and fertilization plan and explore environmental issues connected to large-scale industrial farming, pesticide use, biotechnology, chemicals, and fertilizers. 

Program Members: