Thank You University of San Francisco

We'd like to give a big shout out to the members of the USF Foreward Summer Bridge Program. These incoming freshmen spent the afternoon with us at June Jordan and were a tremendous help. In just a few hours they installed all the beds for the Farmer-in-Residence program and mulched the existing garden!! We greatly appreciate their assistance and hope they come back to visit soon.

The garden is a great place for group volunteering projects and we can accommodate groups of all sizes and skill levels. If you are interested in bringing out your group or organization please click here for an application.

Log Cabin Ranch

This summer, through a partnership with the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department, we began installing our 7^th school garden. Our new site is located on the grounds of the Log Cabin Ranch in La Honda; this residential treatment and rehabilitation facility for adjudicated young men is located on over 250 acres about 45 miles south of the City. This summer the young men visited farms in the area, read articles, installed their irrigation system, completed their garden design, built 4 large garden beds, and planted their fall crops. For the upcoming school year our garden educators will continue to work with the youth, staff, and SFUSD teachers to complete the garden installation, build a composting area, and connect the garden to their classroom curriculum. We are also hoping to be able to incorporate their fresh garden vegetables and herbs into the Log Cabin kitchen once the harvest begins.

For more information or to get involved with this site please contact helpout@urbansprouts.org

To view pictures from the site click here

For more information about Log Cabin Ranch click here

How Your Gift will Make a Difference

This year, our movement is growing because the need for school and home gardens is greater than ever.

Hit by economic recession, families face hunger, lack of access to healthy food, public schools struggling with less funding than ever, and a food system in crisis from oil dependence and outbreaks of disease. We’ve come to know urban neighborhoods with zero grocery stores and rural counties with no access to eating the fresh fruits grown by their own hands.

The simple act of growing your own food brings hope, joy and nourishment! In an Urban Sprouts class, young people dream of the variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers they’ll design into their school garden; a few months later they feel the thrill of digging purple potatoes and magenta beets right from their own soil.

In these times, just like the Obamas, we have SO much work to do.

That's why we're inviting YOU to join us! Click here to GIVE YOUR GIFT TODAY, OF $35, $50, OR $100!


How will your gift make a difference to over 700 youth and their families?

As you may know, Urban Sprouts’ garden-based education classes take place at public middle and high schools, and in the summer at a local community garden. We also give school parents plots within the school garden to grow their own food to feed their families.

Some of Urban Sprouts’ Accomplishments from the past year:

• We provided garden classes for 742 middle and high school students, who each experienced at least 20 hours in the garden;
• We partnered with 7 public schools, including our newest partner, Log Cabin Ranch, part of San Francisco’s juvenile justice system;
• 65% of students’ responses said they eat more fruits and vegetables after participating in our programs; 75% of Summer Program students reported this;
• 53% of students’ responses said they care more about the environment than they did before participating in our programs;
• We were awarded a prestigious three-year grant to expand our new Family Farmers-in-Residence program from the California Department of Public Health (Network for a Healthy California);
• We raised $226,000 to support school gardens in San Francisco; of this 76% went directly to program salaries and materials;
• We created a full-day training to share our methods and program model with more schools and community groups throughout California and the West.

I’d like to give you a more concrete sense of what your contribution will enable us to achieve. Using our streamlined approach, more of your dollar goes directly to help youth and their families grow their own fresh and healthy food.

1. It will cost Urban Sprouts approximately $1,000 to build new vegetable garden beds for our Farmers-in-Residence at our partner school, International Studies Academy, in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.
2. $5,000 enables an entire class of 35 students to grow, harvest and eat fresh food from the school garden each year, helping these young people to make inspiring changes in their eating habits that last a lifetime.
3. $25,000 provides an entire school garden program at one school for a full year, which revitalizes schoolyards, build excitement in the classrooms, and bring fresh, organic fruits and vegetables within closer reach.
4. $40,000 is our ultimate goal, to fully fund our new training and coaching leadership program that will offer six trainings each year, including three hours of one-on-one coaching for each participant, to be held in urban and rural communities throughout California and the West.

Now that you have an idea of what it costs us to provide our programs, I encourage you, click here to make the most generous gift possible, whether it is $500 or $50.

I want you to know that we truly rely on people like you, committed supporters who really understand our vision and who invest seriously in our work.

Please join us in this meaningful work, by making your donation today.

Accomplishments 2008-2009

Summer is a great time to reflect on the past school year, all that we've accomplished and the challenges to come in the year ahead.

Please follow this link to read up on all that we've accomplished during the 2008-2009 school year! Still to come, we will post a report of all the exciting evaluation results of the year in the next month or so.

A HUGE thank you to our dedicated Staff Team, Advisory Board, School Partners, Volunteers, Friends and Donors who have made our work possible this year. Thank you!

Here's to another great year in 2010!