2024 was a year of excellent accomplishment for our agency - along not only familiar paths, but new ones as well.

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FAMILIAR…

• For the 30th year, we operated our summer EduCamp. We enrolled 62 youth ranging from kindergarten to middle school. We employed as our camp staff 18 youth, ranging in age from 14-22, as well as 6 Seniors Citizens, all under the leadership of Jay Shavers. Math and reading skills were tested pre and post camp showing that experienced “summer slide,” and a number of campers actually moved up a grade level or 2. Working with the Kent Branch Library, campers logged over 2000 hours of reading, and 100% of the campers signed a No Violence Pledge.

 

• For the 9th year in a row, we’ve planted, tended, and harvested vegetable crops out of our 10,000 square-foot, raised bed garden: over 4,000 pounds of it. 95% of that food has gone to food insecure families. The garden and what we are supplied by the City’s food banks (with UWay grant funding) has been distributed to 2,253 families. The pandemic is over, but high food prices have kept people coming to our door in large numbers.

 

• For the 3rd year in a row, partnering with Central State University, we conducted our 30 week Fast Track Farming Program. In the first two years of its operation, we graduated 6-7 enrollees. This year we graduated 27.

 

NEW...

• With financial help from both Central State University and the Greater Toledo Community Foundation, we have operated an urban farming oriented program for Jr. and Sr. High Youth. They visited 4 farms in Ohio and Michigan as well as toured Central State University’s Extension program in Wilberforce, Ohio. All this was meant to open their eyes to the career opportunities available to them in the field of agriculture.

 

• Our director, Elaine Page, has found healthy funding for delivering fresh fruits and vegetables to seniors in a specific Toledo neighborhood. The research has shown the average life expectancy in that neighborhood to be 62, compared to 82 in neighborhoods close by. AOA identifies the seniors who are eligible to receive this service. Then, a major Toledo Area grower supplies the fresh food for those 200 seniors, and twice a month, Grace does the delivery. This also provides the recipients much needed friendly, compassionate human contact.

 

• A bright light in all of our food-oriented activity is Nathan McCain, our “Chief Innovation Officer.” As a youth, Nathan worked on his family’s large W. Va. truck farm. As an adult, he held major leadership positions in industry. In retirement, he has become a crusader in what he calls the “Food Revolution.” This movement is sweeping the nation, fueled by the recognition that food is medicine and “taken as directed” can have a huge positive impact on people’s health and longevity. It can also ameliorate the public health conditions that are threatening to bankrupt the Nation’s Medicare and Medicaid systems. Nate got us started working in this program arena 8 years ago and has helped us see that Grace’s participation in this movement can not only bring major benefit to neighborhood residents, but also enable Grace to stabilize its financial condition. 

 

FUTURE...

• Mr. McCain has an extensive understanding of how to drive the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables down, as well as how to market them, both to lower AND higher income groups of consumers around the city of Toledo. This is leading the major hospital systems in Toledo (Pro-Medica AND Mercy Health) to want to partner with us in developing growing and distribution systems that will make the Food Revolution work to improve health outcomes wherever they are unacceptably poor.

 

• With help from these partners in 2025, we intend to transform our 10,000 square foot garden into an example of what the latest and greatest, all-organic, and SNAP card approved urban garden can and should look like. We also plan to continue our efforts to gain access to the Fulton School property (right next door) and bring at least 1 full acre of that 2.75 acre space under supervised cultivation. As we’ve been doing on our home ground at 406 W. Delaware for the last 3 years, we’ll be using this new garden space to teach our neighbors how to farm, as well as how to cook and eat what they grow rendering themselves way hale and hearty as they do it.

 

• Major dollar support for ALL we do, is now coming from the City of Toledo, the Lucas Co. Commissioners, and to a lesser extent United Way and other private foundations. These public entities are beginning to see how important it is for them to invest in the area’s urban core communities. But

 

• At our founding, in 1969, we were a mission project of the United Church of Christ. At the time, the church was our sole source of financial support. Our future depends on our being able to forge a faith based, private-public partnership with entities that recognize how important it is to include EVERY CITIZEN in our efforts to build and sustain the prosperity and vitality of our shared community.

 

Please help us do this with your gifts and pledges.

 

To see exactly how to do that, find the form on the back of the attached photo collage. To see a stirring 2-minute video that describes our push to make our garden a model of what a modern, all-organic garden should look like, go to our website (GCCToledo.org). Once there, click on the garden image you’ll see on the home page. To activate the video clip’s sound, click on the pair of music notes you’ll see on the lower right corner of the video screen.