Community Harvest Project

Program Type: 
Farm Based, Garden Classrooms, Academic Classrooms
Grade Level/Age Group: 
Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School
Number of Individuals Program Serves: 
1,500
Year Founded: 
2002
About the Program: 

Community Harvest Project is a non-profit farm in North Grafton whose mission is to create healthy and engaged communities through volunteer farming and nutrition education for those who are experiencing food insecurity. In addition to our volunteer program, we operate nutrition education programs to teach healthy eating habits to the next generation, and leadership programs to create community ambassadors for hunger. For the past five years we have run a successful nutrition program, Sprouting Minds, that includes field trips, classroom visits, and hands-on cooking classes. While these programs provide an essential opportunity to students, it takes repeated exposure to build lasting healthy habits. We are now embarking on a new program with South High Community School in Worcester, to install a learning garden, provide monthly lessons with vegetable tastings and hands on cooking to 100 freshman students, and vegetable distributions through the school's food pantry. The population of South High Community School is 76% minority, 75.9% high need, and 58.6% economically disadvantaged.