A community garden is changing the lives and hearts of students in one North Texas school district. They're this week’s KRLD Difference Makers.
The student run grocery store at Linda Tutt High School in Sanger has been transformation for students and their families.
“It’s based off a point system where everybody gets points based on the size of their family. There are different opportunities that we give our students to earn additional points that they can use to shop for food and supplies for their families. Our hope is that we build up their self-esteem, their pride and dignity in themselves that they’ve done something,” said Principal Anthony Love. “It’s not just a handout.”
Now the program is expanding even more, thanks to the help of First Refuge Ministry and an almost $600,000 Community Health Impact grant from Texas Health.
“We thought, ‘How can we reach more people?’” said Paul Juarez, Executive Director of First Refuge Ministries, which seeks to serve the underserved with free food, healthcare and dental services. “We already knew that we were feeding more people. We went from 9,000 to 46.000 in just one year, but we also wanted to get healthy food to people.”
Paul says along with providing food for families, the program is bringing back what some think is a lost art.
“We thought that gardening is probably one of those things that is not done as much anymore and if we teach students, they can teach their kids how to garden. Then it won’t be a lost art anymore,” Paul said.
The garden is called Community Strong Farms. The crops that come from the garden will be distributed to area food pantries and the grocery store at Linda Tutt High School.
We're proud to call Texas Health, First Refuge Ministries and Linda Tutt High School this week's KRLD Difference Makers.
“What has come out of this is – one of them is pride. They are really proud of things they’ve accomplished. I can’t but think this is going to pay dividends further on down the road,” Paul said. “The second thing is these students love to serve. Many of the students have shared their personal stories that they’re the ones that have received food previously. To be able to feed other people is really something that they think they are going to do for the rest of their life.”
To reach First Refuge Ministries, email Paul Juarez at paulj@dentonrefuge.org.
Those interested in contributing to the Texas Health Resources Foundation can go here.
If you know someone who is making a difference in the community, send us an email at differencemaker@krld.com.
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