ABCD Youth Job trainees. Jonelle and Dawnele, Sales and Outreach Team. Mujihad the supervisor.

How Victory Programs’ urban farm benefits Boston’s high-risk communities

by Emily Cataneo
Bay Windows
Aug 11, 2010

Excerpt:

Fewer than twenty years ago, Fabyan Street was lined with abandoned houses and empty lots. But things have changed for this short residential road, which stretches between Blue Hill Ave. and Harvard St. in Dorchester. These days, one of those formerly abandoned lots is home to peppers, squash, cucumbers, and collard greens, riotously colored flowers, and a greenhouse.

This is Victory Programs’ ReVision Urban Farm, a one-acre rural oasis nestled in the heart of a neighborhood that has one of Boston’s highest crime rates. The farm, which started in the early 1990s and merged with Victory Programs in 2006, is situated across the street from one of Victory Programs’ homeless shelters. For 34 years, Victory Programs has provided aid to homeless, addicted, or chronically ill Bostonians who traditionally don’t have many resources for support — especially the LGBT community.

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Justin Di Ciano. Photo by Voula Monoholias, Yonge Street Media.

New initiatives feed hungry tummies but also provide meaningful training.

By Anna Olejarczyk
for Yonge Street Media
Toronto Community Foundation
August 11, 2010

Excerpt:

Situated on a 14,000 square foot plot tucked just west of Kipling subway station on Bloor Street is a community based vegetable garden that is not only serving as an agricultural initiative feeding needy families in the community, but is also an outdoor classroom for students and volunteers.

One of PACT’s (Participation, Acknowledgement, Commitment and Transformation) newest initiatives in the Etobicoke area, “Farm-in-the-Village” targets at-risk youth and is an offshoot of an environmental program started a year ago with the Toronto District School Board where schools with kids identified as at being at-risk created a program teaching kids organic farming. In its first year, the program had two school-based gardens.

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