Starting Your Own 'Plant A Row' Program
Plant a Row • Grow a Row builds on the long-standing tradition of gardeners loving to share their harvest with others. It is a people-helping-people program to assist the local food banks in your community. The food banks are in a crunch! More and more families are relying on food banks to help them make it to the end of the month.There is an urgent need for the Plant a Row - Grow a Row campaign.
Only you can make it work!
Plant a Row • Grow a Row has a number of objectives:
To encourage everyone to plant, grow and harvest an extra row of vegetables for your local food banks and soup kitchens;
To support the continued development of a positive relationship between the community and its food banks and soup kitchens; and very importantly,
To have fun …… by doing something that you love to do and sharing your harvest with others!
As a first step, it is important to make sure that your local food bank can accept and will be able to put the fresh produce donations to good use.
A committee should then be formed to organize the Plant a Row . Grow a Row program to best serve the needs of your community. The committee needs a chairperson and a food bank representative to coordinate and guide the initiative, a media person for promotion, and where possible, a master gardener, a garden club representative, a local service club representative and, if possible, municipal representatives and local celebrities.
The committee’s mandate should be to create awareness of the program, why it's needed, how to participate and where and when to deliver the food donations. The food bank should provide guidance as to the type of fresh produce most desired by them. Local commercial growers should also be encouraged to participate.The campaign should have an official launch, continual promotion and reminders to bring in their food donations as well as a closing date.
When the campaign has finished for the year, a celebration should be held to give thanks to all those who participated. Goals should also be set for next year's efforts.
Please advise the national coordinators of your intent to begin a Plant a Row . Grow a Row campaign in your community.
You can reach them by calling 1-877-571-GROW (4769).
The role of the national coordinators is to help share information, experiences and any promotional tools that have been donated or supplied through the support of our sponsors and connections. These coordinators also help to coordinate the national communication campaign and to seek out resources to help support the Plant a Row - Grow a Row program.
Right now, Posters, Public Service Announcements and the experience of other communities can be shared with you to help give you as much support as possible as you start to dig in to this great program.
It’s also helpful to keep in touch with the national office throughout the growing season to tell them what you are doing and how things are going.
For more information: www.growarow.org
For more information: www.growarow.org
Happy Gardening!
