The Vegetable Connection Inc

Our Vision is connecting families and farms to inspire life- long healthy eating. Our Mission is to - Improve Northern Colorado's food resilience by assisting families in need with access to locally grown food, supporting our partner farms and providing nutrition education. The Vegetable Connection's activities have been built on the following values:
• Everyone should have access to nutritious food no matter what his or her level of income.
• Supporting local farms that grow using sustainable methods is important for food security and economic development.
• It is important for people to understand how to grow, prepare and preserve food so they can make informed choices about what they eat and how it affects their health.
• Participating in a community nourishes the soul.

Goals: 1) To double the participation in our Feeding the Families program over the next 3 years, with a 20% increase per year. For the 2023 growing season, we will start by offering 55 shares. We also want to offer Fall/Winter shares to at least 17 families, who would then only have one month where they don't have the vegetable support. 2) To offer workshops and food tastings throughout the growing season plus monthly educational emails to our participants and community.

1. Partnering with seven local farms to provide the vegetables.
2. Communicate with community organizations including Neighbor to Neighbor, Project Self
Sufficiency, schools in Fort Collins, Loveland and Wellington, La Familia and individuals to
increase referrals of families. Work to expand our presence in the Hispanic/Latino community.
3. Schedule an interview with each family to complete the application process including verifying
income, filling out the pre survey, identifying their farm and size of vegetable share and
explaining the history, purpose, and objectives of our organization.
4. Build knowledge and community through workshops, food tastings, involvement at community
garden, volunteering and/or participating in farm activities.
5. Completion of post survey.

We have two dedicated staff members and hire interns each year to assist in our programming. We also have seven members of our Board of Directors who are actively involved in fund raising and communicating with our community.

Partnering with other community organizations for both referrals and to provide nutrition education workshops is important in expanding our reach into the community. Volunteers are the life blood of this organization. In 2022, we had 33 volunteers who donated more than 1,000 hours of their time.

In 2022, Feeding the Families assisted 45 families/135 individuals from low-income families in becoming members at a local partner Community Supporting Agriculture (CSA) farm for an entire growing season by subsidizing
their market-priced shares. In the past 14 years , we have served more than 150 unduplicated families in our community. Having begun with just one farm, we now have seven participating CSAs. In addition to addressing families’ needs, we address the need for our local farmers to establish a broad array of community connections, helping to create sustainable viability for their businesses and increase the amount of locally grown food.

Our Nutrition Education program has increased the number of workshops and tastings each year with 11 workshops and 7 tastings in 2022. A community garden was added to our educational offerings in 2019 and has provided a space to learn about growing food and connecting with other families.