Soul Food Project is an urban farm that hires youth in order to provide life and vocational skills training. Soul Food Project has one main farm but also places youth in two other farms in the city. This is an invaluable opportunity to gain leadership skills while enjoying the beauty of our farm and deepening their connection to our community.

Our farms are different from other urban farms. Soul Food Project is committed to fostering wellness in the African-American community by providing affordable food, offering spaces for local artists and raising up our youth as future leaders. More than food production, our farms serve as beautiful oases in Indianapolis and are used as teaching laboratories for people of all ages. Our farms engage both youth in our after school programs and elders & children in our community. Part of our work is to keep the spaces beautiful through landscaping & garden maintenance. We also grow food that is distributed at a weekly farm stand, food pantries and veggie boxes in the neighborhood. Food justice, youth power & cultural roots are the core foundations of our work.

For the past two years, we have had two major requests. First, the youth have asked to continue the work during the school year. The second one, parents have asked for younger siblings to be involved in more structured programming or a day camp. These two requests are limited by the funding we receive. If given the funding, SFP would transition to year round programming and hire 5 teens to be a permanent part of our Farm Crew. This crew will have already participated in our summer programming and will be learning more about food justice and farming during the school year in preparation for the summer.

In order for us to produce the camp, we would have to charge fees. We have come to the decision to charge $100/week for our summer day camp. The youth will learn farming while also doing fun activities. This campaign will help us to offer scholarships to the youth to ensure everyone who wants to attend can attend.