Neighborhood Food Solutions, Inc.

  • We will focus on working with locally disadvantaged communities, including but not limited to youth and formerly incarcerated individuals, in an effort to develop leadership skills. In doing so, our goals are to:

    • Engage community members in learning about the economic, social, health, and environmental impacts of food.

    • Promote active participation from diverse community members and help implement community development strategies that create food-related economic opportunities.

  • Cultivate local economies

    • Engage communities in a movement to address local food accessibility issues

    • Stimulate local food systems based on urban agriculture practices

    • Bring the local food movement to underserved communities

    Sustain social and environmental reforms

    • Connect local communities by building mutual and lasting partnerships

    • Equip the community with the tools to reform injustices

    • Build a new generation of community members invested in safe, affordable, and healthy food

    Empower members of marginalized communities

    • Offer economic opportunities to community members including previously incarcerated individuals and disengaged youth

    • Develop a self-sufficient community that can continue to address immediate issues

    • Facilitate civic leadership and entrepreneurial skill building

  • [PLACEHOLDER]

Neighborhood Food Solutions, Inc is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our funds are exclusively used towards charitable activities recognized by the Internal Revenue Service

Program for Entrepreneurial and Agricultural Training

(PEAT)

Neighborhood Food Solutions initiated its youth program to build strong foundation for the community. The Program for Entrepreneurial and Agricultural Training (PEAT) began as a partnership between Dane County Planning and Development and the South Madison Farmer’s Market to get a younger generation involved in the urban farming efforts in their community. It is a summer employment program that provides an opportunity for low-income and at-risk teens to learn new skills.

Through mentorship and job training courses, teens are able to gain hands-on experience of running a farm and selling their crops at a market. Students are able to apply through their schools and once accepted get an introduction to farming and start to get their hands dirty right away! The students learn plant identification, crop planning and plant cultivation all while on the farm with a local farmer. They also spend some time in the classroom learning business skills such as budgeting, market and sales. This program provides students with summer employment, new job skills and an amazing experience they will not forget.

Farming After Incarceration Release

(FAIR)

Each year 500-700 individuals are released from prison and return to Dane County. Mostly African American men, these ex-offenders often find themselves homeless and jobless. These factors create a high-risk situation for failing at reentry and many will end up re-offending and going back to prison. In order to help these individuals and others as well as building community welfare everyone, The Farming After Incarceration Release (FAIR Initiative or FAIR) was created.

This program engages formerly incarcerated individuals in urban agriculture to create an economic opportunity for themselves, families, and neighbors. Not only does it provide a way for a successful reentry process, but also it involves them in cultivating a just local food systems in their own communities.

FAIR links a reentry program with urban agriculture. The goal of the program is to take formerly incarcerated individuals and turn them into food justice leaders for their communities. FAIR provides an opportunity for reentering individuals to break out of the incarceration cycle. The program includes 200 days of paid urban farming and business training – both classroom and field training. Each participant receives a plot of land to grow crops and a spot at their local farmer’s market to sell and profit from everything they have grown. The goal of this program is to give marginalized men skills and experience to make themselves self sufficient and eventually grow their own Neighborhood Food Solutions.

Meet the Team

  • ROBERT

    FOUNDER

    EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

    MARKET MANAGER

  • SHELLIE

    BOARD MEMBER

  • ANNA

    BOARD MEMBER

  • DONALE

    BOARD MEMBER

  • OREN

    BOARD MEMBER