From desert to destination: urban agriculture with Growing Home

Harry Rhodes, executive director of Growing Home Inc., tends to more than just plants at the farms. Growing Home provides transitional jobs for people who have multiple barriers to employment, such as a criminal record and housing instability. Photo by Harry Rhodes.

We farm 12 months of the year, but we harvest 10 months out of the year.

By Jennifer Wholey
Medill Reports
Feb 04, 2011

Excerpt:

Harry Rhodes, 51, came home to Wilmette in 2001 after living in Israel for 16 years, where he worked on Jewish-Arab co-existence projects. When he returned, he became the one and only staff member at Growing Home, a non-profit organization started in the early ‘90s to provide job training for the homeless using urban agriculture as a teaching tool.

Now as executive director, Rhodes is at the forefront of the urban agriculture and food justice movement in Chicago, where Growing Home operates three farms on the South Side with a fourth springing up later this year. The farms next season will employ 35 people who have been imprisoned or homeless, and if Growing Home’s record holds, more than 75 percent will find jobs afterward.

Q: What were you doing before you got involved with Growing Home?

A: I’ve done a lot of work with startups, so when Growing Home was looking for an executive director, they wanted someone who could take a startup and also work with different populations. I figured if I can work with Jewish-Arab groups in Israel, which is very challenging, I could handle this also.

Read the complete article here.