Hosted by: Chicago Cares and FarmWorks
Join Chicago Cares in partnership with Heartland Human Care Services as we build relationships and support the maintenance of FarmWorks, a place of tremendous community value in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. Through hands-on service and education, volunteers will learn about the mission of FarmWorks, develop a better understanding of the solutions to job and economic development, and support the production of high quality, local produce that will be distribute to the Vital Bridges Food Pantries on Chicago’s South and West Side.
At Chicago Cares, we believe volunteering deepen volunteer understanding and empathy of challenges facing Chicago’s communities. Gardening with Heartland Human Care Services at Farmworks is intentionally designed to help volunteers deepen their engagement and find their cause. We believe that to move from individual to collective service, we must better understand the structural and systemic causes of issues and encourages our further action. Gardening with Heartland Human Care Services at FarmWorks embodies this core value by giving volunteers the opportunity to directly support community members living in food deserts and to learn more about how they can deepen their engagement around food security.
Chicago Farmworks, which is a part of the human rights organization Heartland Human Care Services, is an urban pantry farm located in West Garfield Park where staff, participants, and volunteers work to yield crops for food pantries in communities that are experiencing food scarcity. For many low income communities, affordable food, especially affordable healthy food, is in short supply. To help address this problem, Heartland Human Care Services (HHCS), in partnership with the City of Chicago, NeighborSpace, and the Greater Chicago Food Depository, operates this 2.6-acre urban farm. They are able to grow, harvest and distribute produce with crucial support from volunteers and transitional job participants who are working to overcome many barriers to secure permanent full-time jobs. The produce grown goes to their food pantry program, Vital Bridges, where those who are living with HIV and AIDS and are unable to afford food can select what they would like at no cost and receive individualized nutritional assessments and educational sessions.
What to Expect:
Through hands-on service, volunteers will support FarmWorks through completing tasks, such as: weeding, shoveling soil and gravel, wheelbarrowing materials, and planting seedlings – all of which address the community priorities of creating more green spaces in the neighborhood and supporting residents in obtaining well-paid, long-term employment. Along the way, we’ll connect with each other and build trust, empathy, and understanding with our neighbors.
Duration: 2:00pm – 5:00pm
Location
407 Albany Ave behind Dodge Elementary School
