Planting Seeds & Nurturing Growth with Grow Dat

Five Thousand Dollars to Celebrate Five Years.
For a Farm That Transforms Lives.

Over the last 15 years, young people from across New Orleans have consistently shared that working at Grow Dat positively changed their life. That's why I support Grow Dat Youth Farm in any and every way I can.

This Give NOLA Day, I'm celebrating five years on the board by asking the people I trust and appreciate most to join me in contributing $5,000 to Grow Dat's collective Give NOLA Day goal.

Grow Dat is a youth leadership organization rooted in the work of growing food. Since 2011, Grow Dat has created over 760 jobs on its seven-acre farm in City Park where young people gather from all across New Orleans to work, learn, and grow together. They are paid fairly for that work; They are taken seriously as leaders, researchers, and co-creators of the organization's future. And the 2025 year-end results speak for themselves:

• 100% of youth said the program helped them understand how food gets from farm to table
• 100% said it helped them understand how race, class, gender, and immigration status affect people's access to food
• 98% said it helped them think about climate change and human impact on the environment
• 98% developed skills for future employment

These are young people from fifteen different schools and all different neighborhoods across New Orleans who came to a farm and left transformed.

I know this because I've been witnessing and experiencing  that transformation since the organization's founding in 2010. I deepened my professional partnership with Grow Dat in 2014, bringing my Tulane students to the farm through service-learning. This experience reshaped how I think about learning, leadership, and what it means to contribute to my community. 

I joined the board in 2020 and became Board Chair in 2023. I became the parent of a young leader in 2024. Our family regularly visits the farm - listening to croaking frogs on the bayou, counting butterflies and dragonflies, planting (and picking) flowers, enjoying carrots from the ground and satsumas from the trees. And of course, chatting with our favorite farmers and farm friends!

Over the years, I've watched Grow Dat alumni grow into full-time staff roles and executive leaders on our board of directors. Youth, alumni, and allies organized to secure our future in City Park. We've continued to live into our core values through shared leadership, pay equity, alumni governance, and expanded ecological restoration and multigenerational partnerships. 

Grow Dat grows more than food. It nurtures our youth and the future leaders of our city. This GiveNOLA Day, join me in raising $5,000 to celebrate the five years I've had the privilege of serving this organization on the board. 

Your gift supports youth wages, food distribution through shared harvest partnerships, and the ecological restoration work that is making City Park more native and more resilient for everyone who calls New Orleans home.

Give here in honor of the next generation of New Orleans leaders.