Center for Food & Justice

Project Grow

A small girl in an Oakland area domestic violence shelter jumps up and down with joy because she has helped to grow strawberries, something she had never experienced before. A teen staff member and former resident of a shelter in Orange County is pleased and proud that he now takes time to make a salad for lunch from the shelter garden instead of running to McDonalds, his usual routine. An administrator of a third shelter in Del Norte County talks about reducing food costs. This is done by bringing a bounty of fresh produce into shelter meals through a subscription to a Community Supported Agriculture project, a program that links a farmer to the subscriber group through a basket of the produce harvested that week. A domestic violence victim in San Diego says that she is able to briefly forget her problems when she works in the community garden that had been created by the shelter where she lives. These stories and many more like them were told by those who participated in Project GROW, a unique program that explored the idea that gardens and healthy foods could improve the lives of both the clients and staff of grassroots domestic violence agencies.

The Project GROW: Gardens for Respect, Opportunity and Wellness pilot program, 1999-2001, explored the potential link between improving community food security and access to healthier food and addressing the issues and impacts from domestic violence.

Project Grow was a two-year pilot project that explored the potential for gardens and healthy foods as a means to improve the lives of both the clients and staff of grassroots domestic violence agencies. Through Project GROW, edible and decorative gardens and other food and nutrition programs were established by nine domestic violence shelters across California. CFJ helped inspire this pilot program through a feasibility study and then, once the food programs were established, provided training, technical assistance, and evaluation for the nine agency pilot programs.

An evaluation of the project funded by the California Department of Health Services was completed by CFJ in the summer of 2001. Read the final report: Growing Food, Healing Lives: Linking Community Food Security and Domestic Violence.