SUNBURST UNLIMITED INC

Our mission is to educate and guide youth, organizations and communities in developing a sustainable local food source through composting, gardening and year-round greenhouses.

We have realized that our niche in this community is to teach the kids - teach them what it means to eat fresh, to eat what they can grow, to know that they have the knowledge and the power to be healthy.

We have a high level of poverty, and we know that youth don't learn when they are hungry. So we grow food in our 2.2 acre Garden and give it to organizations who need it - Meals on Wheels, Boys & Girls Club, Head Start. We also know that if youth learn how to garden and grow and eat fresh, they will make decisions from a different place when they become adults. Change always starts with the young.

We have programs to both educate the youth in the Garden), and to educate the parents (the FRESH Food Forum) and to teach that we can have local food sustainability.

We collaborate with other organizations to bring fresh food to families who don't usually get it through the FRESH Rescue Program.

When the big trucks stop coming to Montana with food, we want folks to know how to come together and be able to grow food, feed themselves, and stay the course.

We envision a world of sustainable fresh and local food communities.
OUR STRATEGY IS TO REACH THE CHILDREN, TEACH THE CHILDREN, AND WATCH THEM CHANGE THE WORLD

To this end we do the following:
Lease a 2.2 acre former city-park, which we evolved into the Westside Orchard Garden, teaching gardening/growing & nurturing 40-50 youth 5 days a week all summer from the local Boys & Girls Club, City Rec. Center, and Homeschool families.
The youth grow their own food, along with a large Garden dedicated to Boys & Girls club families, Meals on Wheels, and the local Head Start Kitchen.
We organize and manage the FRESH Rescue Program, which takes out-of-date fresh food from a local grocery store and distributes it to youth organizations such as the Mercy Home, Juvenile Detention Center, Boys & Girls Club, Parkdale (our local low-income housing), and the Foster Care Program.
We annually sponsor and host the FRESH Food Forum, attended by 100-200 local residents who attend classes on gardening, nutrition and networking with local growers and producers. The Forum also includes a 2-hour Kids FRESH! Food Forum with a variety of activities and booths for learning about good food, growing, exercise and all thing healthy.

We are able to lease our 2.2 acre Westside Orchard Garden (a former city park) from the City of Great Falls for $1 a year. We hire a Garden Manager, who oversees the planting and managing the Garden for about 6 months, because our growing season is short.

If possible, we apply for Americorps Vista Volunteers to work with us in the Garden. The youth organizations that we work with always have adults who come with the kids to the Garden, and together with our Garden Manager, they grow and learn about gardening.

Because we are serving and teaching youth, local organizations have been very generous with funding and support. Many organizations use the Garden as a volunteer service focus for their business, so we have many volunteers in the Garden during the spring, summer, and fall months.

We are a small nonprofit, with minimal administration costs - a salary for our Garden Manager, and with grants and gifts, we are able to fulfill our mission.

Our Westside Orchard Garden is a teaching Garden, as well as a growing Garden. We like to provide innovative ways for people to think about growing food. We provide programs in the summer free of charge to app. 200 youth through the Boys and Girls Club, Salvation Army youth program, the Cameron Family Center in the Rescue Mission, and the Community mental Health youth program. Each year we have been able to increase the organizations and # of youth we teach in the Garden.

We want to expand the FRESH Rescue Program to include more grocery stores donating their fresh food (out-of-date), but do not have at present a facility large enough to handle any more food. There is so much possible........

We have goals of collaborating with other community organizations in creating a local food processing center, with a commercial kitchen - not one that we would manage, but that we could help get off the ground in the planning. Our community badly needs one in order to handle the excess fresh food that is possible.

We are thrilled with our progress so far, in being able to both reach our local youth, and offer thousands of pounds of fresh food to needy families, but there is so much to be done. Step by step...