Progress report for FNC24-1409
Project Information
Yves Doumen is the founder | Manager of the Motherland Community Project. Yves has worked.
with underserved families and communities in various roles for many years. In the past three
years, Yves has developed the Motherland project to increase access to healthy food among underserved communities in Springfield. Yves build a community garden of 80 raised beds and where his hard work over 3 full gardening years has yielded over 2000 lbs of fresh healthy vegetables, 10 lbs of fruits (apples and peaches) and 7 lbs of honey that has been distributed for free to the S 15th street communities and over. He is one of the 2023 recipients of The Outstanding Young Person of the Illinois Jaycees in the under 40 categories. Yves grew up in a farming family and has a passion and experience in sustainable urban agriculture and agroforestry. He holds a bachelor's degree in Geography, an Associate degree in Agriculture Business and is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in government policy and Non-profit Management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He also serves as a reserve soldier in the Illinois Army National Guard. Yves will oversee the implementation of the project, including managing staff and volunteers to successfully carry out the planned activities and completed reports and other managerial activities. Yves has developed a successful 6–8-week summer program named "From seeds to Table" to teach underprivileged K-12 students the basic of gardening, soils health and food processing, consumption and composting techniques.
Azeyah Thomas is a USA Marines veteran who has been deployed twice. He is currently.
enrolled in computer science at Lincoln Land Community College. He has been outstanding.
working alongside Yves as a garden program assistant specialist. He participated in the 6 weeks.
gardening summer program and was one of the reasons the program was successful. He is.
interested in farming and is being trained and mentored by Yves. Izeyah will be helping with the
summer programs that are going to be implemented by Motherland, assisting with the k12 program,
writing daily reports, setting up training shop as well as maintaining the gardens and the training
area.
Based on our experience working in Springfield for the past three
years, we realized that BIPOC
community (youth and adults), particularly Blacks, have limited
knowledge in agriculture.
Almost everyone I came to contact with indicated that they have
never grown food in their life
which makes it difficult for them to get involved in community
garden to produce food. Even
though Motherland reserves some of the land for the community to
grow vegetables for
themselves, there was no interest until the food shortage
resulted from COVID-19 lockdown.
Since then, there has been an interest in learning how to grow
vegetables and how to prepare and
consume them. We intend to capitalize on this momentum and expose
more people in the
neighborhood to sustainable urban agriculture to grow a
culturally relevant food in different.
neighborhoods.
Therefore, we will provide training on basic agricultural
knowledge, including vegetables and specialty crops production,
we will reserve space in our 3 gardens for participants to
practice and implement knowledge learned. We will do cooking
demonstrations to teach people how to prepare vegetables and
meals from scratch. All this will be done with support of the
University of Illinois Extension.
Our objectives stem from our five-year strategic plan and
are as follows:
1. Establish incubation program to inspire and train BIPOC
communities/underserved
communities on agriculture entrepreneurship as an alternative
career to increase.
employment and income.
2. Establish a 2 community gardens on the South and East sides of
the City.
Approach:
Objective 1.
Establish sustainable agriculture incubation program to inspire
and train BIPOC.
communities on food entrepreneurship as an alternative career to
increase employment.
As part of inspiring BIPOC and underserved communities to develop
interest and
entrepreneurship in agriculture and local food, we plan to
establish an incubation center in
Springfield. Recently, motherland has secured one a partnership
with a local farmer to use an acre of their farmland to train
Underserved and BIPOC communities' members in the understanding
of land access, getting involved in agricultural business,
including learning and developing community supported agriculture
(CSA) to provide healthy.
food for their neighbors while earning income. One of the
requirements of this new land is to use.
conservation and sustainable agriculture production practices.
This requirement is well aligned.
with the Motherland philosophy and values of regenerative
agriculture production. Beginning farmers will be trained in
different techniques, including vegetables production and
processing, compositing, mulching, crop rotation, integrated pest
management, and no-till or minimal tilling as appropriate. In the
next three years, we intend to enroll at least 10 beginning
farmers from BIPOC and underserved communities, and immigrants
interested in small-scale local food production and marketing.
Participant will receive training in production, agricultural
business development, including finding niche markets and to
provide fresh food to their communities where grocery stores are
lacking.
Objective 2.
Established community's gardens in the South and East sides of
the City.
The needs for accessing fresh healthy and affordable food are
critical in Springfield. However,
there are many empty plots city and county owned land,
particularly in the Black neighborhoods.
Motherland purchased its current land from the County and has
established a good relationship.
with the county officials. We will use these relationships to
acquire more land and establish more
community gardens in the eastern and northern part of the City
where poverty and food
insecurity are concentrated. According to the non-profit Feed
America, 25 percent of the Black
in Springfield is food insecurity compared to 15 percent Hispanic
and 11.2 percent White. Most
of the underserved communities are concentrated in the 62703-Zip
code -east and north of the
city, with the east side being predominantly Black. Motherland
will use a similar approach.
discussed above to inspire community members to learn how to grow
food closer to their
neighborhoods. This will address issues of transportation that
affect low-income to participate in
community gardens far away from the neighborhoods.
Research
The model we’re developing for incubation is critical because we’re in a community where people want to learn to farm, but there isn’t really a place to start. Our project is a place for them to get that start, whether it’s in a community space or on their own space or plot.
We focus on vegetable production because it has good value on the market, and culturally tied to our background.
Objective 1: Incubation Program
Incubation program is going very well. In this short period, we are so happy with the participation and how people are keeping up with the training.
We have a core group of 12-15 people that we work with year round, from conferences to in-house workshops. There are 15-20 others that are participating seasonally, mostly March - November. So far, three have been able to get their FSA farm number and have their own plot of land.
Objective 2: Community Gardens
We have one as of Feb 2025, on the South side. This is land that we reclaimed (it was an abandoned plot, owned by a nonprofit organization). We have been able to build 36 wooden raised bed gardens. It does not have water. We were able to put the fence up. Now we are struggling with the addition of water.
On the East side, we opted to use steel frame raised beds. We have seven 12’x4’ beds and eight 3’x6’ beds. At this site, we struggle with the Same thing, though: no water.
The goal is to have one gardener per bed, but our contract allows farmers to have more than one bed (no more than three). However, we have noticed that when someone is starting at the very beginning, the bigger the bed, the more likely they are to fail and end in weeds. It is better to start small, and have the space be productive and full of plants instead of weeds. We have people start with one bed and then, when they have the knowledge, skill, and capability to take care of larger spaces, they use those. This way they progress from one program to another.
We have had good luck enforcing that people use mulch to control weeds and reduce water consumption.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Three events at the garden, training beginning farmers:
- Composting: 120 in all, but probably 17-20 producers and 11 ag professionals
- Plant propagation: August was biggest of the year: 350, roughly 20-25 producers and 11 ag professionals
- Pest control: 25 total, with 10 producers and no ag professionals
These were hands-on events where people learned from older or more experienced growers and then got to try the techniques they learned. We had such a good turnout. People want a social connection. We had a really good partnership for these events with NRCS and Extension.