The Urban Garden Initiative: Tackling Food Insecurity

By Megan Chen: founder and senior director of the urban garden initiative

In 2018, an estimated 1 in 9 Americans were food insecure, equating to over 37 million Americans, including more than 11 million children. In the last couple of years, this number has only been growing. Specifically within Delaware, "Sixty-one percent of Delawareans live in Census tracts where there is no grocery store, according to a report by the Institute for Public Administration, a unit of the University of Delaware’s School of Public Policy and Administration. Twenty-seven percent of the state’s population live in census tracts, usually consisting of 1,200 to 8,000 people, that only have one grocery store." After learning more about this problem in my freshman year of high school, I was absolutely shocked that so many communities all around the country (and our world) were considered these “food deserts”, and I was even more surprised by how close to home this problem truly was. 

From there, we began to formulate solutions to this huge issue. This began by learning and researching more about this issue within my own community. The summer before I launched TUGI, I worked on an urban farm right in the center of Wilmington, Delaware. Here, I not only gained an incredible amount of gardening knowledge but I also got the chance to talk more with community members about the issues they were dealing with and the solutions that had been set in place already. It was through this knowledge that I began to put together the pieces to develop our first educational gardening program that we tested at a couple of schools in the city. We wanted to plant this ‘seed’ and teach students how they could take on these community challenges on their own through tangible solutions such as growing their own food in the city. Through prototyping, we gained valuable feedback and continued to develop and strengthen our gardening programming which later turned into an all-encompassing environmental education program. 

The Urban Garden Initiative is now an international 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that aims to empower and inspire youth to achieve urban sustainability through a gardening based program. We have 40+ chapters all around the world, in approximately 20+ states, and 6 countries. We have been able to work with over 400 volunteers and impacted over 5000+ students. If you are interested in getting involved with The Urban Garden Initiative, check out our website or instagram here!