What began as giving an excess of home-grown tomatoes to homeless people evolved into a half-acre of land, two gardens and a soup kitchen.
Project Roots AZ is a nonprofit organization based out of Phoenix, co-founded in 2019 by former Phoenix Mercury player and WNBA coach Bridget Pettis and her business partner Dionne Washington. The organization was founded with the mission of nourishing and educating communities in need as well as promoting healthy eating and a more sustainable way of urban living.
Since its inception, Project Roots AZ has emphasized supporting community members by feeding them through community gardens and providing them with seasonal produce deliveries and mobile kitchen services.
“Our mission is really to grow food for those that have food insecurities and provide that fresh, healthy food for them as well as educate and nourish the community on how to grow their own food,” Washington said.
Even though many farms have struggled during the pandemic, the Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market has provided a platform for many of them, including Project Roots, to establish a loyal customer base and earn a steady income.
“The Downtown Farmers Market has been a pretty big market for us and we’ve been accepted really well into that community,” Washington said. “It’s just been a wonderful experience and a great market to be a part of. They have been our connector from the farm to the consumer.”
The Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market has been a staple part of the Metro Phoenix community for 16 years, hosting an assortment of small businesses and local farmers to provide fresh, local food to residents. The market hosts around 90 vendors every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. year-round.
“I think [our market] is pretty special,” said Downtown Farmers Market manager Colin Dueker. “A lot of it is the vendor make up–the diversity of the vendors we have and the patrons of the market. They all kind of come together and create this good energy where people want to be there and want to support each other. I think it’s a lot of like-minded people coming together in support of the things they care about, such as local business and the local food system.”
During the start of the pandemic, the farmer’s market was named an essential service, remaining open in order to assist local business owners with selling during what is a very financially challenging time for many businesses.
“I feel like we started right on time,” Washington said. “You know, as things were shutting down and people were stopping planning their weddings and restaurants were closing and we were all trying to figure out how to live, Project Roots just ramped right up. It forced us to really get to interact together and really be like a real nonprofit and have these people in place.”
While many companies began to shut down and experience financial difficulties at the start of the pandemic, Project Roots gained a larger consumer base after partnering with Arizona Food Bank Network to distribute produce to low-income families statewide through their federally funded “Friends of the Farm” program.
Due to COVID-19, residents have faced difficulties accessing healthy food and food education. Project Roots AZ aims to help with education into sustainable growing methods in tandem with combating food insecurity. The organization values educating members of the community on ways to grow their own food, such as through hosting youth cultivation classes.
“It’s one thing to feed somebody, to put a food box together and drop it off–that’s fulfilling and it’s great,” Washington said. “But it’s super awesome to be able to say we taught someone how to make that tomato soup, you know, so they’ve taken the skill and can make it for their families, for themselves.”
Project Roots is one of the nine farms selected to participate in the Urban Agriculture Fellowship Program. The program, which originated at the start of the pandemic, aims to help Phoenix residents develop a stronger, more sustainable local food system and bring a new wave of urban farmers. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, the average age of Arizona farmers is 59.4—but the city aims to create a new generation of farmers by matching nine young residents with nine local farms, including Project Roots.
“We love that they made it towards the age of 18 to 24 simply because I think the average farmer in Arizona is in their 60s or late 50s. We’re grateful to work with the city for this program,” Washington said.
Project Roots AZ currently maintains two gardens, one at Agave Farms in Central Phoenix and one at the Spaces of Opportunity Garden of Phoenix. Members can volunteer at the farmers market, as well as their soup kitchen, their community garden and their Spaces of Opportunity Garden. They pride themselves on the work they have been able to do for their community over the past three years and plan to continue providing fresh produce for the Phoenix community for the foreseeable future.
“We could have been a for-profit farm… but that’s not what it was about,” Washington said. “It was about the community and we knew going the nonprofit way really showed the community our truest intentions, which were we just want to feed you. That’s what it’s really all about with Project Roots: community.”
Contact the reporter at sabuggle@asu.edu.
