Community Vitality 2025 - Growing Chefs! Ontario

 

Community Vitality 2025

Growing Chefs! Ontario

Food literacy and security with “Learn to Grow, Grow to Give”

Grant: $225,000 over 3 years

Grant Summary: The Learn to Grow, Grow to Give Project combines food literacy/education and food security programming in innovative, efficient ways by growing and providing fresh, healthy foods for food-insecure families, while delivering equitable, accessible food education programming for children, families, and schools.

Growing Chefs! Ontario Executive Director at the new community garden.

Growing Chefs! Ontario changes the way children learn about and develop relationships with food. Their “Learn to Grow, Grow to Give” project, which blends food literacy, environmental education, and food security, has received the support of a $225,000 Community Vitality grant.

Through school and community partnerships, Growing Chefs! delivers bi-monthly, culturally relevant food boxes—filled with fresh, organic produce grown in their gardens and greenhouses—to food-insecure newcomer families at no cost. These food boxes are more than just feeding people, they’re a tool  to get children excited about food and strengthen relationships within families.

The pilot program, which ran from 2022 to 2024, fed between 20 and 32 families twice a month, engaged over 9,000 children in garden education, grew nearly 10,000 pounds of food, and diverted 2,000 pounds of food from being wasted.

Growing Chefs! now have the capacity to expand the program by developing a new 1.5-acre urban farm in East London on land provided by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). Following the WSIB’s move to London from Toronto, the organization was keen to be involved in the community, with a community garden high on their list of goals. A partnership with Growing Chefs! allows WSIB to achieve this goal, while also giving the community the benefit of using Growing Chefs’! existing knowledge, experience, and relationships.

“The project expansion will reach up to 50-65 additional food-insecure families each month,” said Executive Director, Andrew Fleet. “This will also strengthen partnerships with organizations that are focused on building long-term, collaborative relationships to re-think solutions surrounding food security for families in need. The expansion will provide additional educational opportunities for schools and community groups currently on our extensive education program waitlists, helping to reach over 1,000 additional children each year.”

The grant will help cover essential costs, including seeds, soil, garden equipment, and the staffing needed to grow, harvest, and distribute food, as well as deliver educational programming. The Community Vitality grant will account for a significant portion of the total cost of the project, with funding from other local supporters, including The Miggsie Fund, Western Fair District, Libro, and Canada Life already being secured to make the expansion possible.

Full list of 2025 Community Vitality grant recipients:

 
Matthew Brewer