Tag: Backyard Growers Indigogo

Backyard Growers Final Stretch For Push For Global Headquarters

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

We need a Backyard Growers Headquarters

Help us expand our GARDEN EMPIRE!

Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States Food

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BREAKING NEWS! Generous donors have stepped up to offer a 3:1 match to help us reach our $15K goal! For every $10 you give, our matching donors will give $30!
Backyard Growers has become RADICALLY AWESOME. Here’s why—In five short years we have evolved from providing a handful of neighbors with backyard gardens TO THIS:
  • Over 1,300 Gloucester elementary school students plant, harvest, and eat from their school gardens each year.
  • Built O’Maley Innovation Middle School’s first school garden with over 200 6th graders to support the science curriculum.
  • Built West Parish School gardens at Burnham’s Field. When West Parish moves, the gardens will join Burnham’s Field Community Garden, which will be managed by us!
  • Expanded the Gloucester Preschool garden, providing early hands-on gardening and healthy snack experiences to over 90 preschoolers.
  • Providing afterschool programs through Gloucester U at the high school, O’Maley Academy at the middle school, and at Beeman and Veterans Schools through the YMCA.
  • We now serve the entire Gloucester school district—from preK to high school. Other school districts have expressed interest in adopting our model!
  • Since 2010, 150 new gardens built in Gloucester for families, community groups, organizations, and schools, helping hundreds of people learn how to grow their own food.

What we need and how it will benefit the people we serve

Backyard Growers is a small, scrappy non-profit organization. We know how to do a lot with a little. Our main base of operations is my house. And when I say my house I mean my kitchen table, my small office, the hall, the living room, the bedroom, the basement, the yard, the driveway, and sometimes spilling out into the street. Backyard Growers also exists beyond my house! Thank you to The Open Door for providing space for our FoodCorps service member, and to the city and school district for storing some of our stuff.

All of this to say, we have officially burst our seams and are in need of an OFFICIAL BACKYARD GROWERS HEADQUARTERS. We are currently looking for a space. We need to raise $15,000 to pay for the first year of rent and associated costs. Our own space = centralized operations = more efficient program and operations management = strengthened programs/more people served/strategic organizational growth.