Gardening the Community:  Change Begins Locally For MegaFood

MegaFood’s community outreach mission is to support projects which lead to healthier lifestyles, spread awareness with regard to organic foods and sustainable living and ultimately benefit individuals, communities and our beautiful planet earth.

In the spirit of extending ourselves more deeply into the community and supporting those ideals which are closest to the heart of MegaFood, we have committed to providing funds for local community gardens around the United States. Supporting local and small farmers helps to develop the infrastructure and vitality of our immediate community – healthy communities contribute to healthy countries and healthy countries make a healthy world. Buying local is beneficial to the environment, reduces energy consumption and increase our chances of eating fresh, ripe produce. This is ultimately beneficial to our health, since fresh ripe fruits and vegetables are more heartily packed with fragrant phytonutrients than those that have been harvested before ripening and shipped for days across countries and even continents.

Featured Gardens

The NH Common Ground Garden Project is a program of the  UNH Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development program and the Massabesic Audubon Center. The Project supports between 150 and 300 inner city children who visit the 4-H Children’s Teaching Garden at Massabesic weekly in the spring and summer.

The project includes afterschool / summer programs, in which children come from the Manchester Housing Authority, Salvation Army in Nashua, the Merrimack and Nashua Boys & Girls Clubs, Girls, Inc., in Manchester, Families In Transition and Massabesic’s Camp WildSide. The children learn how to garden sustainably and produce food which they take home to feed their family.  In addition they donate to the New Hampshire Food Bank – by participating in this type of service the children can enjoy seeing their peers in the community benefit from the seeds of their efforts. Last year the garden sent over 5,000 pounds of produce to the Food Bank.

We are also proud or our Farm Fresh Partners™ program, which focuses on purchasing fresh, local produce and herbs from organic, sustainable farmers through out the United States. Buying local and US grown produce and herbs not only assures freshness and nutritional quality but also supports farmers and their families.

Gardening the Community Inc. is a youth-centered, community based, urban agriculture program in Springfield, MA. The project uses formerly abandoned city lots on which to cultivate organic fruits and vegetables, while at the same time teaching and practicing agricultural and environmental stewardship and community development. The vision is to help introduce and foster principles of sustainable living through urban agriculture