Community Growers: Food Equity
The City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) will provide funding to one nonprofit (i.e. 501(c)(3) organization to serve as a lead delegate agency for the Community Growers Program. There are two main goals of this program:
- Reduce barriers to urban agriculture by supporting urban growers with access to land, resources to build long-term urban agriculture sites, and technical support.
- Increase equitable community access to healthy foods by creating new food access points in communities experiencing food insecurity.
The lead agency will manage the development and implementation of 25-30 urban agriculture sites by providing financial and technical assistance to urban growers (“sub-grantees”) to support existing urban agricultural sites and build urban gardens and farms on vacant lots, with a goal of increasing availability of and access to healthy food in communities facing high levels of food insecurity to low-moderate income communities Neighborhoods that are predominantly low-income communities have less access to healthy food and experience greater food insecurity and food-related illnesses.
The total amount of funding available for this program is approximately $2.1 million. It is anticipated that the lead delegate agency will award funds to 25-30 urban agriculture projects (“sub-grantees”) with the following criteria. 10% of the total budget will be retained for the lead delegate agency’s administrative costs to manage the program.
- Creation of 10 brand-new urban agriculture project sites on city-owned vacant lots Installation of permanent water lines at least 15 existing urban agriculture sites.
- Implementation of projects at 15-20 existing urban agriculture sites, which may include testing and land remediation, construction of hoop houses or other infrastructure, and more.
Questions:
Questions may be emailed to: BACPEconomicRecovery@cityofchicago.org.