Last month, I took my brothers to volunteer at the Urban Farming Guys. This nonprofit organization help disadvantaged communities build from within. Their focus is to build economy, capacity, and resiliency, while giving back to the global open source community.
As I've mentioned before, I love to volunteer. I signed up with this organization through the app, MeetUp, where I am part of a Kansas City volunteer group. The "event" from the Urban Farming Guys was listed and they mentioned needing help with gardening, cleaning, pruning trees, etc. Being someone who doesn't usually volunteer with environmental organizations (simply because I prefer other ones), I was intrigued that this group was in the urban core.
I brought my two younger brothers along since they had little volunteering experience, and I felt like this would be the perfect introductory volunteer project since it was hands on. The three of us gathered our working gloves and set off to the organization's headquarters.
After touring the main building, all the volunteers were split up into groups. Each group would work on a certain project. While I went with the group that was cleaning, the boys went to plant lettuce.
The Urban Farming Guys is a family-owned nonprofit. They have a large greenhouse, row gardens, and saplings in the middle of a run-down, industrial part of Kansas City. They also have two houses to lodge interns/apprentices who want to work for their keep. These houses were both bought in horrible condition: broken windows, sloping foundation, holey roofs, etc. The first house they bought was so bad the owner sold it to them for $1,000. With help, the family renovated it to look modern and homey. One afternoon, they we picking up trash outside another run down house. The owner of said house happened to drive by and offered to sell it. For one dollar.
one dollar.
This dollar house is where I spent my day cleaning. As previously stated, the Urban Farming Guys had transformed it into a three bedroom, two bathroom gem. With the help of the family's 4 year old, I mopped, swept, dusted, and wiped the house head to toe. While I was busy with deep cleaning, my brothers were doing some fantastic work in the greenhouse.
The Urban Farming Guys use aquaponics to grow a variety of lettuce all year round. The harvest is their biggest money-maker, as they sell it to local grocers in the city. At first, I was taken aback that they were not selling this lettuce to the local people, which is the largest need. However, they reassured me that with all the community gardens they have throughout the city, as well as fruit trees, they give a majority of their produce into the kitchens of the poor in KC.
My brothers and the rest of their group were using a vacuum-style machine to plant the seeds into soil pods. These pods would then be placed inside Styrofoam-like boards, which then would be put into the water troughs.
You can view a short clip of the process on my dtube channel here:
In the end, I learned a great deal about how Urban Farming Guys positively impacts the Kansas City community, and how anyone can get involved in the process. My brothers and I give this volunteer experience two thumbs up! We hope to be back soon.
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