Welcome to our donation page!
My name is Minister Aaron K Hopkins, the Visionary Farmer Director of South Side Family Farms. I am the dedicated Executive Director of the Nonprofit ICANDO Community Development which oversees the mission of the urban farms, learning spaces, and youth educational workforce development programs housed under South Side Family Farms. This has been my full-time ministry in the community for the past 5 years on a full-time basis, post-COVID, after God transitioned me from my 30 years as a Demolition foreman at Colvin Gravel and Demolition. Previously I engaged these youths after coming home from work and providing jobs for them in helping me establish our farming network on Land Bank properties. At that time The Ohio State University had a program through a Kellogg grant called InFact (The Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation) Buckeye ISA (Institutionally Supported Agriculture) that brought resources and education to the community for growing food. Yet more importantly it brought a vision of growing and sourcing local food for Institutions like The Ohio State University and our local Columbus City School system.
Unfortunately the Covid pandemic interrupted our sales to dining halls, food safety packaging regulations changed, and we never regained the opportunity to sell directly to the University and City Schools. During this time another opportunity opened in my development through Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA), the Heartland New Beginning Farmer course, which both myself and wife participated in. We attended their conference that year (2020) and through attendance gained access to my 3-acre rural farm in Johnstown and developed an LLC, Seedlings Of Change and Plants For Progress.
How we are growing and who’s helping.
Columbus City Council provided $22,225 through a program called FarmSHARE (Farms Serving Health and Racial Equity) to bring strength to the local food system. We have a local Ohio State Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Club that has established a walk-in cooler that youth from the community helped to build. We are 90% completed with this project established on land provided by the Grote Family of Donatos Pizza, and the Farmstand is located at the site of the original Donatos location established by the founder Jim Grote and now operated by his daughter Jane Abel Grote. Donatos and Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Ohio State University College of Engineering, Dr. Christopher Ratcliff and his students (shout out to them), and CFAES (College of Food Agriculture and Environmental Sciences) are our primary contributors, along with multiple Columbus Foundation and USDA grants.
Recently we received a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Rancher and Producer grant of $28,000, and were a partner organization in an Urban Agriculture Innovative Producer (UAIP) grant with Franklinton Farms, where we established the Community Growers Network (CGN) comprised of 8 urban farms in Columbus. This funding provided compensated Apprenticeship Coordinator and Volunteer Coordinator roles that greatly assisted our production and operations. However, those funds expired in August of this year, and we are still working on addressing the capacity question of building our organization’s sustainability past grant funding. This is a challenge that arises in making food affordable to food-insecure communities while having to invest in infrastructure and equipment necessary for effective day-to-day operations and activities. We are set to participate in multiple farmers markets this year so that we can increase our involvement with and support from the broader Columbus community.
Here is the impact your contributions will make. We're grateful for your consideration!
The seeds of the season I need you to sow along with me will allow the fruits of God's vision to manifest into functional solutions for economic development. We are addressing food insecurities by establishing a food system in which the black, brown, and indigenous youth of this South Side, Columbus community can participate. This includes paying them wages that will also affect their household, where most often it is a single-parent working two jobs that don’t pay living wages. It will address nutritional education for these youth that will change the trajectory of the health outcomes and affect the chronic health disparities of Diabetes and Hypertension, the mental health issues that surround obesity, and the negative Social Determinants of Health that are present in lower-income black and brown communities.
Your support will first and foremost, assist in providing an indoor facility to engage youth in a year-round mentoring program teaching agriculture and farm development through Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). This will bring another source of revenue to our enterprise, providing space for a larger food processing facility so we can initiate a Value Added Food Product element, further increasing important avenues of education and marketability. The 2,225 sq ft indoor space along with an additional 12,000 sq ft fenced gravel area, comes at the reasonable cost of $1500 a month and is centrally located within 1 mile of our Farmstand and blocks of the local high school. We envision this as a space where we can establish a year-round 4-H club, extending beyond our over-summer agricultural education programs. It will be a place where during the school months we can assist with tutoring and homework in addition to sharing 90 minutes of hands-on agronomic experience. We will also provide our youth with a healthy and nutritious light meal. We plan to include transportation drop-off for the youth whose parents aren’t able to pick them up.
We intend to have a transportation component attached to our programming and workforce development. It would allow for team transport to our various work locations within the community. We will have a driver who possesses a chauffeur license and can also assist with mentoring. We will teach financial literacy with an incentive for the 8-12 cohort that completes the program. Youth will advance in the program after a year, and they will become peer guides in the work. We want to motivate these youth to consider The Columbus Promise offered by the City of Columbus in Partnership with Columbus State to offer 2 years of free tuition to youth who graduate with at least a 2.8 GPA from Columbus City Schools.
We will need your support to bring 4-5 part-time associates (graduates or interns of Central State University or Ohio State University, University Dayton, and Wilmington College) working 20-25 hours a week at $17-$22 depending on the role performed as educators, mentors, or farm assistants. All will actively perform roles related to increased production and marketing, right beside the youth to guide by demonstration. I am a firm believer in the principle of “Leading By Example”.
Our growth this season is preparing us for “Greater” so we don’t want to take for granted continuing to instill the organizational and operational components of success. We are also budgeting resources for our web designer, insurance on both farm and vehicle, produce sales, containers, seeds, soil amendments, internet, utilities, gasoline for travel, and accounting services. We are in process of farm/site audits that will allow us to receive Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certifications of safe food processing, which will give us access to necessary markets. Our team is currently working on infrastructure upgrades for our indoor facility as well.
Please feel welcome to contact us at SouthSideFamilyFarms@gmail.com. We want to express utmost appreciation to you for hearing our story and for any assistance, financial or otherwise, that you may provide!
Graciously,
Minister Aaron K. Hopkins
Visionary Farmer & Director | South Side Family Farms
Executive Director | ICANDO Community Development