Watering Chicago's Food Deserts

Local group trains homeless and low-income residents of South Side in organic agriculture

Barack Obama’s career trajectory took him from the rough-and-tumble South Side of Chicago to the U.S. Senate to the White House.

For the folks at Growing Home, a South Side Chicago-based nonprofit offering job training to homeless and low-income individuals through urban-farming, the goals are much more modest: a good job, a living wage and healthy food on the table.

“We’re very much addressing the Chicago in need,” says Rebekah Silverman, the organization’s administrative director. “There are a lot of food deserts in Chicago, especially on the South Side, where there are no grocery stores and where the economy has just been devastated.”

Growing Home runs a number of farms, both in Chicago proper and outside the city. Participants in the group’s program work four days a week at the farms, learning about agriculture and home gardening. Because many participants are (or have been) homeless, or have spent time in prison, they also receive job-readiness training, including reading help and resume preparation.

“Homeless people often are without roots,” says Les Brown, who founded the group in 1992. “They’re not tied down, not connected, not part of their family anymore. Growing Home is a way for them to connect with nature—to plant and nurture roots over a period of time. When you get involved in taking responsibility for caring for something, creating an environment that produces growth, then it helps you to build self-esteem and feel more connected.”

The farms also provide an environmental benefit, Silverman says.

“There are over 30,000 acres of empty lots on the South Side,” she says. “Transferring those into urban farms is providing a good service; it’s certainly better than cracked concrete.”

The produce tastes better, too. “Food grown in your neighborhood is transported less, and it is fresher when it gets to you,” Silverman says.

Indeed, Growing Home lies at the heart of the growing urban farming trend and sits at the nexus of social justice, the economy and the environment—working at economic and community development through organic agriculture.

Not only do participants receive vital career skills, they also receive access to healthy food that is otherwise unavailable, or that requires a trip to a different neighborhood. The Englewood area, home to the group’s Wood Street Urban Farm, is a “very decimated low-income neighborhood,” Silverman says. “There’s a Dunkin Donuts around the corner. There are a few liquor/convenience stores that may have a banana occasionally.” But that’s about it.

Silverman says people often ask her whether she really expects participants to find agriculture-related jobs.

“Not really,” she answers. But “they can translate the work they’re dong with us into other fields. Our goal is for all people to leave the program with a full time job at a living wage.”

Some of Silverman’s graduates go into food services, others have found work in gourmet grocery stores, and still others have joined programs to learn food safety certification. Nearly 70 percent of last year’s participants were still employed six months out of the program.

So while they might not be following Barack to Washington, Growing Home’s participants are finding jobs where the presidential candidate launched his career—right here at home.

Note: SustainLane board member LaDonna Redmond sits on Growing Home's advisory board.

Photo Caption: Golden beets are harvested in preparation for the Englewood Farmer's Market. Growing Home is committed to selling half of what it grows at the Wood Street Urban Farm in the Englewood community.(Photo by Andy Collings)