Many of our older community residents grew up on the farms of rural Puerto Rico, first coming to northeast as migrant farm workers, now proud to use their experiences and skills to improve our community. Immigrants and refugees, in cities throughout the US come from agrarian backgrounds and have knowledge and skills to improve decayed, violent inner-cities, making farms, businesses, parks and art, while teaching a younger generation.

Young men learn their identity and role in society from elders while growing food and building community, reminiscent of traditional villages. We are achieving truly healthy young men and communities.

Based in the inner-city Latino community of Holyoke, MA, it is now working with immigrant, refugee and ethnic communities throughout the region and country.

Nuestras Raices staff and youth leaders deliver workshops at conferences throughout the country, lead tours, and teach workshops at our Nuestras Raices Farm site in Holyoke, MA, training new leaders and teachers. We are working on a multi-lingual training curriculum and written materials and training a core of additional youth and adult lead trainers. We market our trainings and model at conferences and through partnerships with state, regional and national immigrant and refugee organizations. We are developing and branding our farmer cooperative to market our products and our model throughout the northeast.

But our idea depends much less on top-down resources and policy as it does on grassroots collaboration between inner-city communities. Even as these resources fall into place, our idea is already scaling up as we work, community to community, sharing and teaching.

As Nuestras Raices' initiatives crosscut fields of environment (conservation, education, organizing), economic development, social justice, education, nutrition & health, culture, etc., we nimbly access diverse funding streams.

Nuestras Raices is launching a training institute to support replication of its model. With initial state and foundation seed money, Nuestras Raices Institute is designed to be self-sustaining with income from paid trainings and publications.

27 staff - 7 full-time adult staff, 5 part-time adult staff, 15 paid youth staff. 14 college interns, 100s of community volunteers from community gardens, youth groups, corporations, local churches, colleges, probation dept. etc.

We see our partners for replication/expansion of our model as being immigrant, refugee and people-of-color organizations in early stages, often doing community gardening, and looking for powerful ways of using their own assets to help youth & teens and address the issues of their community.

Commercial and minority business lenders for financing of new food & agriculture enterprises - farms, restaurants, greenhouse ventures, etc.

The older gardeners wanted to pass on their knowledge and heritage to the children of their neighborhood and they set aside a plot within the garden for the kids. We contacted a bilingual science teacher in a neighborhood school, who began bringing several of her students one day per week after school. The kids liked digging in the dirt, seeing their products grow, spraying water, the time with positive mentors, being part of something important, and they kept coming back. As these children grew up each year, bringing in new participants, the program and organization has grown with them, adding field trips, college tutors, murals, jobs, environmental research and education, and business enterprises. Together the youth and elders have been learning and working together, revitalizing the city, and beginning to work with other communities throughout the region and country.