November Change for Change: Nuestras Raíces

Nuestras Raíces, founded in 1992, is a Spanish-language grassroots urban agriculture organization based in Holyoke. Their mission is to create healthy environments, celebrate agriculture, harness their collective energy, and to advance their vision of a just and sustainable future.

The founding members of Nuestras Raíces were all migrating farmers from Puerto Rico with a strong agricultural background, who found themselves in a city without opportunities. Realizing that the physical landscape of the city was not being cared for, these community members took action into their own hands. They located an abandoned lot in South Holyoke and came together to rehabilitate it. The lot became the city’s first community garden, sparking the growth of urban agriculture in Holyoke under the umbrella of Nuestras Raíces.

Today, Nuestras Raíces coordinates and maintains a network of 14 community gardens with over 600 family members and operates a 30-acre urban farm that focuses on urban agriculture, economic development, and creating food systems change.

Just a few of the good things Nuestras Raíces does include...

  • Maintaining an urban farm that supports 10 - 15 Latino small farm business tenants cultivating and selling cultural crops favored by the community

  • Supporting food entrepreneurs who lease their commercial kitchen and restaurant facility

  • Operating a mobile market that serves Hampden County with fresh produce

  • Providing technical assistance and financial literacy classes to Latino entrepreneurs

  • Collaborating extensively with area public schools to develop a strong Latino youth labor pool

  • Operate a Puerto Rican Lechonera (spit-style pig roast) take-out facility that is leased by a local entrepreneur
     

You can learn more about Nuestras Raices by clicking here.

 

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