GrowGood

We are revitalizing 15 acres at the West LA VA Campus to address food insecurity, job access, and green space for Veterans. Through our Urban Agriculture & Food Systems Training Program, we will create jobs, grow and donate thousands of pounds of produce to the VA Food Hub for food-insecure Veterans, and preserve vital green space, offering holistic support to the nation’s largest homeless and food-insecure Veteran population.

Using our 1.5-acre urban farm adjacent to the Bell Shelter, GrowGood has created an ecotherapy wellness program that provides healing through nature. We offer mindfulness-based classes that include meditation & yoga, art therapy, nutrition, and community building for the Bell Shelter, which provides comprehensive care & housing for homeless individuals. Through our classes, participants are taught mental health practices and activities that will help improve their long-term mental health outcomes, and that they can use throughout their lives.

GrowGood's Food for Life program will provide a healing space and therapy on our urban farm for 600 homeless individuals who are experiencing poverty, drug addictions, and mental health issues, including PTSD. With this award, GrowGood will serve 600 unduplicated individuals--35% of participants are veterans, often with PTSD.

GrowGood, Inc., a non-profit organization, has worked since 2011 in partnership with the Salvation Army's Bell Homeless Shelter to transform the 1.5-acre parcel of fallow land adjacent to the Shelter into a small farm. With $100,000, GrowGood will launch its UCLA award-winning social enterprise business plan to build a greenhouse on-site to grow and sell produce year-round to LA’s finest restaurants. The social enterprise business will employ Shelter residents, many of whom are veterans.