About
Garden-Raised Bounty (GRuB) works at the intersection of food, education, and health systems. With roots in the land, we create opportunities for people to learn, lead, and thrive. We envision an equitable world where we are all nourished by healthy relationships, resilient community, and good food.
Program Details
GRuB grows healthy food, people, and community. With roots in the land, we create opportunities for people to learn, lead, and thrive, with a focus on helping marginalized communities that lack the resources they need to prosper.
Program Goals
We orient GRuB’s diverse programs towards meeting three interconnected outcomes: growing healthy food, people, and community. Here are some of the specific goals we are on track to achieve in Fiscal Year 2024-2025:
Outcome 1: Increase access to healthy, local, and sustainable food
- 40+ home gardens will be built for low-income households, reaching more than 100 individuals
- GRuB will support 3+ community gardens in the City of Olympia, reaching more than 100 individuals
- Over 8,000lbs of produce will be grown by youth for themselves and the community
- 40+ garden recipients and 40+ youth will increase their ability to grow their own food
Outcome 2: Improve individual skills, resilience, and empowerment
- 40+ youth will increase their job, leadership, social-emotional, and public speaking skills
- 100% of Youth in the GroundED program will gain work-readiness skills
- 30+ veterans will gain skills & connections in farming and beekeeping
- 100+ educators will gain skills and knowledge in farm- and land-based education
Outcome 3: Increased sense of connection to community
- 30+ veterans will connect to the land and share their stories through the veteran talk circle, farm work parties, and/or garden builds
- 40+ youth will increase their connection with each other and the wider community GRuB’s Growing Home Collective will engage over 75 members of the Black community in food and farm programming
- 70+ volunteers will offer 2,000+ hours of time to support GRuB’s mission
Needs Addressed
Our programs and work at GRuB addresses a variety of issues and needs, including:
Education: At the heart of our work, GRuB is committed to a diverse array of non-traditional education models to support our community in learning, leading, and thriving! We prioritize vocational pathways for our youth, agricultural entrepreneurship education for transitioning veterans, gardening workshops for community gardeners with low-incomes, and Indigenous plant trainings to help support mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being through connecting to and learning from our local ecosystems.
Healthy communities: We want all people to be well—physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially. Wellness includes having enough resources, safety, support systems, and opportunities to learn and grow. We want all people to thrive by contributing in ways that are personally meaningful, relevant, and energizing. In our programs, our focus is on food-based resilience to grow healthy communities. We grow food on the farm and distribute it to hunger relief organizations and people with food insecurity in our communities. Our home gardens are able to support growing over $500 worth of food, and our community gardens increase resiliency and food sovereignty.
Environmental stewardship: We want to honor all living things, including land, water, air, ancestors, and people yet to come. Our programs that work with our farm maintain a focus on regenerative and sustainable agriculture. Additionally, our gardening workshops teach how to maintain long-term success of gardens, decrease food and water waste, attract pollinators, and other land stewardship techniques. To us, environmental stewardship embraces diverse thought, identity, lived experiences, ways of being, and meaningful relationships — because of this, we recognize the importance of utilizing traditional land stewardship techniques to produce food!
Contact Clare Follmann clare@goodgrub.org (360) 753-5522 Garden-Raised Bounty
Services Offered
To work towards our mission and vision, we engage participants in our five main umbrella programs, with several projects within each one:
The GRuB garden project — Brings gardens to low-income families in our region
Veteran programming — Helps veterans transition into civilian life and supports budding veteran agricultural and beekeeping enterprises
Wild foods and medicine — Offers teachers training on local native plants and the rich Indigenous cultural traditions that surround them
Youth programs — Supports opportunity youth as they gain social-emotional skills, career experience, education and tutoring, and a wage while working on our 3-acre farm
Growing home collective — Works to uplift the leadership of Black people who experience the impact of American oppression and enslavement.
Among many other community services, we also offer home gardens, community gardens, young adult programming, affinity group work, veteran support, and socio-emotional workshops.
Cost to Participate
Our programming and events are mostly free to the public, with a few exceptions for fundraiser events or dinners. We provide sliding scale access whenever possible.
Staff Composition
GRuB values community representation in our work! Among GRuB’s core staff and board members, 18 of 23 are either program alumni or have shared experience with participants in one of our key program areas.
This map of GRuB Farm was drawn by a staff member and illustrates many of the farm's features.
Future Plans for GRuB
As we continue to evolve our innovative programs to address community needs, we recognize that the well-being of our staff team is a top priority and absolutely foundational to our success. Through surveys and a Compensation Working Group, we have learned that we need to prioritize raising staff wages at GRuB. In short, we’re committed to raising staff salaries over the next several years so that an entry-level position at GRuB is paid at least $25/hr — a floor that we will adjust with inflation. We also plan to pilot a 32-hour work week next year in recognition that shorter hours with more pay can support our team, with the flexibility to care for themselves as well as their households and community. All of this will involve creative planning to raise funds and partnerships with our supporters and peer organizations. We look forward to sharing more, and hearing your thoughts and perspectives!
Awards
Program Manager Kerensa Mabwa was recognized in 2024 by the YWCA as their Annual Woman of Achievement award recipient, acknowledging her leadership of the Growing Home Collective.
