Case Study:

Urban Agriculture

2013-2020

Scope

Good Food Work's urban agriculture programming provided homeless and formerly-incarcerated participants of The Doe Fund’s Ready, Willing & Able program with hands-on urban agricultural education and meaningful social engagement opportunities, as well as accessible therapeutic green space.

In 2013, Good Food Works installed its first garden on site at The Doe Fund’s Harlem Center for Opportunity in collaboration with The Horticultural Society of New York. In 2014, in collaboration with Feedback Farms, it expanded to a new garden at The Doe Fund’s Peter Jay Sharp Center for Opportunity in Bushwick, Brooklyn. In collaboration with Brooklyn Grange, Good Food Works also installed a rooftop at The Doe Fund”s Harlem site, introducing beekeeping workshops to trainees working in the Harlem garden.

Over the subsequent years, until the program wound down in 2020, Good Food Works expanded both sites and experimented with a number of program models, ranging from professional skill building in sustainable agriculture to social engagement with neighborhood residents, in an effort to identify the model best aligned with the mission and evolving programmatic priorities of Ready, Willing & Able.