USA: Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro SouthBrockton and Taunton, Massachusetts | EST. 2021
In Boston Metro South, the local Boys & Girls Club has brought community members, kids and families, big-name donors, and nonprofit leadership together around a container farming program. With Clubhouses in Brockton and Taunton and a summer camp also located in Taunton, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South(BGCMS) serves some 2,500 local kids annually. BGCMS first brought a Freight Farm to their Taunton Camp Riverside location in early 2021. It was followed shortly thereafter in early 2022 by a second Freight Farm at their Brockton Clubhouse.
The farms offer more than just food to the Clubs; they present opportunity. They are teaching tools; the basis of creative programming for youth; a way of involving community volunteers; and a way for the Boys & Girls Club to support other local nonprofits.
Stakeholders and Funding
One of the major reasons that all of this has come to fruition is Derek Heim, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South’s President and CEO. Derek had wanted to bring a Freight Farm to the Clubs for five years — ever since he’d run a community farm at a previous job. While farmland isn’t available in downtown Brockton, Derek wanted to be able to offer the BGCMS community a similar opportunity. He held on to this dream until the state’s Food Security Infrastructure Grant funding during COVID made it possible for Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South to purchase their first farm.
