​Gardening The Community is a food justice organization engaged in youth development, urban agriculture and sustainable living to build healthy and equitable communities.

GTC operates a training program created for youth from around the Mason Square neighborhood and beyond to grow fruits and vegetables on vacant and abandoned lots. Youth receive a stipend and are taught principles of urban sustainable living and urban agriculture.

The food that is grown is sold at our Walnut Street Community Farm Store, the Mason Square Farmers Market, local restaurants, and bodegas (corner stores).  Youth also bring food home to their families.

To encourage a more sustainable lifestyle, no pesticides or herbicides of any kind are used in the food we grow, and all work is done without any major farm equipment.

In order to irrigate crops, we utilize rain collection and water conservation methods into our growing practices. This reduces our dependence on the city water supply and shows other potential gardeners how to incorporate a low-input farming practice that is practical and sustainable.

Food Justice: The right of all people to an adequate, safe, nutritious, and sustainable food supply
​

"Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence." -- Pearl Bailey
​

This has devastating impacts on young people’s performance in school, as well as their short and long term health. What are we leaving our children for the future? How can we ask our youth to operate in a world in which the food itself is destroying our health?

At GTC, the core of our mission is rooted in food justice. We believe we have the ability to solve our local hunger and food insecurity challenges through growing food, empowering our youth, dismantling institutional racism, and creating opportunities to ensure that local, healthy, nutritious, and affordable food is available for all residents in our home city of Springfield, Massachusetts and beyond.

GTC Youth delivering produce by bicycle.

12 Things You Can Do To Grow The Movement for Food Justice

​

1. Organize for racial justice; find out who is doing food/racial justice work in your community and get involved
2. ​Reclaim abandoned land and grow food with your neighbors
3. Talk to your friends and neighbors about food and racial justice (how some communities have access to healthy, affordable locally grown food while others don’t)
4. Support living wages for food workers and farm workers
5. Join your local Farm Share (CSA) program; encourage them to offer a sliding scale fee and flexible payments for members
6. Organize to get grocery stores to locate in neighborhoods like Mason Square
7. Look at what doesn’t work and build alternatives
8. Petition to get fresh, healthy food into public schools
9. Support local growers; shop at Farmers’ Markets whenever possible (especially the Mason Square Farmers’ Market!)
10. Get your community’s grocery stores, corner stores and institutions to buy locally grown food
11. Become an active member of your local Food Policy Council