Hey Y’all, is it really November?
The “warmer than I expect them to be” days, and how quickly time has flown, makes me wonder? The dates on the calendar and another growing season put to bed, reminds me that another year's end is just weeks away. And what a year it's been! GTC has worked so hard to keep pace with what seems like an ever-increasing need in our communities while staying focused on our youth, staff and infrastructure development so that we can meet that need while building our muscle to do more. Your support makes it all possible! THANK YOU!
No matter how often I write or say thank you, it never feels like enough! Your investments in GTC do so much more than help us to pay our bills, as important as it is that we do. It's easier to talk about how each of our staff make a better than average wage amongst their peers. It's not what we think they deserve or what we wish we could pay but because of you, our wages have moved closer and closer to sustainable. You help us to employ people who otherwise might be working a job that drains their spirit and doesn't provide enough for them or their families. Instead, we are all privileged to be a part of something that changes health and lives.
One very hot day this summer during one of our farm share distributions, I worked with our youth. Some of them, despite the heat, were dressed as pieces of produce. Watching them with customers, describing the produce in the share and different ways of preparing it, made me feel so proud of them, Toussaint our assistant youth program director and Tracy our farm store manager. Toussaint and Tracey have worked incredibly hard this year to implement our STEM aligned curriculum and integrate the youth into running the farm store. When I asked the first year youth what they liked about GTC, a 14-year-old Latinx young man looked at me and said "GTC fills me up when I'm empty after school or a cop car follows me on my way here." His reply took my breath away and my eyes filled with tears. I replied back just as quickly that you all do the same for me. I don’t remember how many pounds of food we sold that day but I will never forget that moment.
I always think about our youth and staff when I write to you. It's my hope that thoughts of them will inspire me to inspire you to continue or increase your support. I also think of you when I need inspiration to get through the hard parts of the work, a denial of a grant, an unexpected expense and most sadly the recent losses of beloved community members. I consider your names, faces and everything that you do for us. What GTC does for our youth, is what you do for us! You fill us up!
So many of you send me little notes or call me up when something terrible happens in the world, especially here in our country. Sometimes you write just to ask me how things are going or to say thanks for something that was featured in a GTC newsletter. Those moments are like luminarias along the pathway of my life. I often share them with the staff. I always share them with my son, Evan. He's 12 now and I can mark so much of his life by GTC's benchmarks. Those of you who've been with us for a long time have watched or heard about him growing up. He's the same age that Tamir Rice was when he was killed by the police on 11/22 in 2014 and just a few years shy of the age that 14-year-old Trayvon Martin was when he lost his life.
Evan's questions about the unfairness of the world have grown more difficult to answer each year. He has lived through all we did in 2020, and since as have the GTC youth. On those very hard days when I search for the words to help them all understand the difference between the unrelenting assault of systemic racism and what I believe are the hopes and dreams of the majority of people who want better for all of us, you all and the ways that you support GTC are centered in the examples that I offer. Knowing that you understand the arc of the long continuum between systems that keep people marginalized and unable to access healthy food thereby shortening their lives and other extremes that cause people who look like Evan, the GTC youth, Toussaint, Tamir, Trayvon, Ahmaud Arbery and even young white men to experience a shortening of their lives, makes me feel less alone and a bit more heartened.
Our youth have met and visited with some of you. You have watched with me as so many of them have grown up and gone on to college, grad school and become agents of change in their own rights. Every person who walks onto our farm site or into our store feels how much they are valued. This couldn't have happened without you! Believe me when I say it! I hope that you feel it in your hearts and in your bodies as I do. I wish that I had the words to express the level of gratitude, and as awkward as it may feel to write and for you to hear it, the deep unending love that I carry for you. I don't understand why we're so much more comfortable talking about what we don't like than declaring what it is that sustains us. You sustain GTC and you sustain me. Never doubt it.
We need and hope for your continued support. The ever-present food and environmental injustices have not ebbed as the pandemic seems to be. BIPOC led organizations may not be the "flavor of the week" anymore but our work is just as vital, as it has always been.
We hope you will be able to stand with us at this year's end as you have before. A few of our donors have said yes to making gifts that will enable us to call you in and ask you to match them. It's our hope to raise at least $50,000 by this year's end so that we can hire a farm manager who will help to lead us in growing more than we do now, teaching our staff and youth additional farm skills and ultimately feeding as many people as we can both, in food and in spirit.
I know that supporting GTC is not the only thing that you do. So many of you also work in your own communities to bring equity to the lives of people all around us. I like to believe that all of that energy is bouncing off of each other and multiplying, filling us all up. And I am asking, with the deepest gratitude and respect, that you continue to support GTC so that we can continue to "fill up pantries and refrigerators and the spirit of our youth.
A year ago, when writing to you, I pictured myself talking with you all over cups of soup at our fall harvest festival. I'm going to picture it again for next year. Who knows maybe we'll be together sooner? As you are making your decisions about how to give, please picture that with me?
If together, we can buy land, build a greenhouse and a farm store, navigate a pandemic and "fill up" teenagers, I have to believe that the tide will continue to turn, we will all be together again and that the best is yet to come!
Picturing you in my mind's eye and hugging you in my heart.
liz
The “warmer than I expect them to be” days, and how quickly time has flown, makes me wonder? The dates on the calendar and another growing season put to bed, reminds me that another year's end is just weeks away. And what a year it's been! GTC has worked so hard to keep pace with what seems like an ever-increasing need in our communities while staying focused on our youth, staff and infrastructure development so that we can meet that need while building our muscle to do more. Your support makes it all possible! THANK YOU!
No matter how often I write or say thank you, it never feels like enough! Your investments in GTC do so much more than help us to pay our bills, as important as it is that we do. It's easier to talk about how each of our staff make a better than average wage amongst their peers. It's not what we think they deserve or what we wish we could pay but because of you, our wages have moved closer and closer to sustainable. You help us to employ people who otherwise might be working a job that drains their spirit and doesn't provide enough for them or their families. Instead, we are all privileged to be a part of something that changes health and lives.
One very hot day this summer during one of our farm share distributions, I worked with our youth. Some of them, despite the heat, were dressed as pieces of produce. Watching them with customers, describing the produce in the share and different ways of preparing it, made me feel so proud of them, Toussaint our assistant youth program director and Tracy our farm store manager. Toussaint and Tracey have worked incredibly hard this year to implement our STEM aligned curriculum and integrate the youth into running the farm store. When I asked the first year youth what they liked about GTC, a 14-year-old Latinx young man looked at me and said "GTC fills me up when I'm empty after school or a cop car follows me on my way here." His reply took my breath away and my eyes filled with tears. I replied back just as quickly that you all do the same for me. I don’t remember how many pounds of food we sold that day but I will never forget that moment.
I always think about our youth and staff when I write to you. It's my hope that thoughts of them will inspire me to inspire you to continue or increase your support. I also think of you when I need inspiration to get through the hard parts of the work, a denial of a grant, an unexpected expense and most sadly the recent losses of beloved community members. I consider your names, faces and everything that you do for us. What GTC does for our youth, is what you do for us! You fill us up!
So many of you send me little notes or call me up when something terrible happens in the world, especially here in our country. Sometimes you write just to ask me how things are going or to say thanks for something that was featured in a GTC newsletter. Those moments are like luminarias along the pathway of my life. I often share them with the staff. I always share them with my son, Evan. He's 12 now and I can mark so much of his life by GTC's benchmarks. Those of you who've been with us for a long time have watched or heard about him growing up. He's the same age that Tamir Rice was when he was killed by the police on 11/22 in 2014 and just a few years shy of the age that 14-year-old Trayvon Martin was when he lost his life.
Evan's questions about the unfairness of the world have grown more difficult to answer each year. He has lived through all we did in 2020, and since as have the GTC youth. On those very hard days when I search for the words to help them all understand the difference between the unrelenting assault of systemic racism and what I believe are the hopes and dreams of the majority of people who want better for all of us, you all and the ways that you support GTC are centered in the examples that I offer. Knowing that you understand the arc of the long continuum between systems that keep people marginalized and unable to access healthy food thereby shortening their lives and other extremes that cause people who look like Evan, the GTC youth, Toussaint, Tamir, Trayvon, Ahmaud Arbery and even young white men to experience a shortening of their lives, makes me feel less alone and a bit more heartened.
Our youth have met and visited with some of you. You have watched with me as so many of them have grown up and gone on to college, grad school and become agents of change in their own rights. Every person who walks onto our farm site or into our store feels how much they are valued. This couldn't have happened without you! Believe me when I say it! I hope that you feel it in your hearts and in your bodies as I do. I wish that I had the words to express the level of gratitude, and as awkward as it may feel to write and for you to hear it, the deep unending love that I carry for you. I don't understand why we're so much more comfortable talking about what we don't like than declaring what it is that sustains us. You sustain GTC and you sustain me. Never doubt it.
We need and hope for your continued support. The ever-present food and environmental injustices have not ebbed as the pandemic seems to be. BIPOC led organizations may not be the "flavor of the week" anymore but our work is just as vital, as it has always been.
We hope you will be able to stand with us at this year's end as you have before. A few of our donors have said yes to making gifts that will enable us to call you in and ask you to match them. It's our hope to raise at least $50,000 by this year's end so that we can hire a farm manager who will help to lead us in growing more than we do now, teaching our staff and youth additional farm skills and ultimately feeding as many people as we can both, in food and in spirit.
I know that supporting GTC is not the only thing that you do. So many of you also work in your own communities to bring equity to the lives of people all around us. I like to believe that all of that energy is bouncing off of each other and multiplying, filling us all up. And I am asking, with the deepest gratitude and respect, that you continue to support GTC so that we can continue to "fill up pantries and refrigerators and the spirit of our youth.
A year ago, when writing to you, I pictured myself talking with you all over cups of soup at our fall harvest festival. I'm going to picture it again for next year. Who knows maybe we'll be together sooner? As you are making your decisions about how to give, please picture that with me?
If together, we can buy land, build a greenhouse and a farm store, navigate a pandemic and "fill up" teenagers, I have to believe that the tide will continue to turn, we will all be together again and that the best is yet to come!
Picturing you in my mind's eye and hugging you in my heart.
liz