Growing Together: Blue KC to Help Create New Center for Urban Agriculture
“If you build it, they will come.”
You may remember this line from the movie, “Field of Dreams.”
DeLaSalle Education Center in the Troost Corridor of Kansas City, Mo. has its own field of dreams, as nearly an acre of well-maintained land sits empty on school grounds. But that’s about to change.
“In five years, you will see a full-fledged farm,” said Sean Stalling, Executive Director at DeLaSalle Education Center, which is the only alternative charter high school in Missouri dedicated to serving at-promise urban core students. “You’ll see a farmers market, and you’ll see DeLaSalle become what I think schools are: Cornerstones of a community.”
Thanks to a partnership between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, behavioral and mental health nonprofit Cornerstones of Care, and its vocational program Build Trybe, that grassy field will transform into a learning farm to help DeLaSalle Education Center become a new center for urban agriculture.
“You can expect chicken coups, rabbit hutches, produce, fruit trees, orchards and hoop houses,” said Theo Bunch, Director of Build Trybe. “We are working with a really amazing group of DeLaSalle high schoolers who are going to create a vision for this field where it becomes a learning farm center that will produce food for the Kansas City community, and most importantly, for the students themselves, for their families, for their kitchens and for their school.”
“I’m excited to see the students run the farm!” said Chanel Griffin, Farm and Culinary Manager at Build Trybe. “I’m excited to see them take ownership of it and for the students to be excited about the things that come out of the farm.”
“We’ve been waiting for that whole backyard to change for a while now,” said Ji’Ziah Anderson, student at DeLaSalle High School. “I love gardens, too. I got my garden love from my mom because she really likes to grow plants. I’m pretty excited.”
“Over the years of me being here at DeLaSalle, they’ve presented a lot of new opportunities to us, and this is really exciting because this is a lot of hands-on activity,” said Ny’Asiah Thompson, student at DeLaSalle High School. “We get to do things we’ve never done before, so that’s really exciting. It’s an opportunity for us to make future career goals.”
“Our students and our community expressed a need that we have experiential learning,” Stalling said. “We had a lot of land, and we decided that this acre of land would be better served addressing some of the societal needs that our kids face. That’s food insecurities, healthy living, and having access to healthy food.”
It’s the next chapter for DeLaSalle Education Center and a first step in the school’s long-term vision of becoming one of the leading urban farming schools in Kansas City. The initiative will help address food insecurity, as one in seven people in the Kansas City region is at risk of hunger. Access to nutritious food is critical to health and resilience. 60% of U.S. adults live with one or more diet-related chronic health conditions, underscoring the potential for increased access to healthy foods to improve health outcomes nationwide.
“One of the end goals is that the produce will go back to the community, which is super important because we know that health outcomes are largely driven by things that are related to our social drivers of health, and one of those things is actually food,” said Rebecca Anderson, Director of Community Health at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. “So, we are super excited to walk alongside these students and learn from them and watch this process unfold.”
“We’re going to have strawberries, carrots, you name it,” said Ji’Ziah Anderson. “We’re going to make it fun and entertaining for the school because not a lot of schools have that.”
“People go through things and may be homeless,” said Kei’Myah Jackson, student at DeLaSalle High School. “We can give out free fruit and vegetables.”
“This is the start of a journey that’s going to be going on for the next 10, 20, 30 years if we do our job right,” Bunch said.
“Most importantly for me, it sends a strong message that Kansas City cares about kids,” Stalling said. “The students at DeLaSalle are being embraced, and their ideas are being promoted so their thoughts and their genius are coming to light. I’m just glad being a small vehicle to making that happen and find great partners like Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, Build Trybe, and Cornerstones of Care to make that happen. So, it’s overwhelming and it feels really good to have this happen.”
