The Food Project

The Food Project: Lincoln - Boston - North Shore

Our Mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. Our community produces healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and inspires and supports others to create change in their own communities.

Our Vision: We envision a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, local, healthy, affordable food.

Our Values:

We believe:

• youth and adult partnerships are at the heart of our best work;
• we are stewards of our land, culture and community – and, in turn, they sustain us;
• our strength grows from diverse experiences, backgrounds, cultures and points of view;
• true learning is reciprocal and requires transparency, humility and bold action;
• in hard work that balances rigor, reflection and fun;
• all people have a right to healthy, affordable food that nourishes our lives and the planet we share.

What We Do:

The Food Project is a launching pad for new ideas about youth and adults partnering to create social change, connecting youth from diverse backgrounds to each other and to the land, and using food production and distribution in metropolitan areas as a way to not only bridge race and class but also ensure food security for all.

Each year over 120 teens from the city and suburbs join with thousands of volunteers to grow and distribute over 150,000 pounds of fresh produce to hunger relief organizations, farmers markets in food-insecure neighborhoods, and a Community Supported Agriculture program. Throughout the year, teenagers take on a substantial amount of responsibility growing and distributing organically-grown produce, learning about sustainable agriculture, local food systems, food security, community building, public speaking, and most of all, themselves. Each year The Food Project shares its innovative model with an increasing number of communities around the nation through conferences, manuals, and trainings. To further deepen our impact, we have launched a national network to support peer organizations and prepare young people to take leadership roles in creating the future of our food systems.