Urban Farming Entrepreneurship Program: Providing minority youth entrepreneurship training to increase employment and food access

Original (2022-2023) 

Our primary objective is to help youth develop the skills needed to start their own sustainable urban farm business. We will achieve our stated objectives of the project providing workshops and hands on activities using both professionals, entrepreneurs, and volunteers to share entrepreneurial and sustainable agriculture skill sets with minority youth, Marion County Extension, Indianapolis (Schwabero) and Purdue University (Nzaranyimana, Orvis, Shoaf) will partner with youth serving organizations (FHC, Soul Food Project, Mother Loves Garden and Green Thumb Patrol). Nzaranyimana will collaborate with partners to assess and create a list of relevant needs, activities and workshops then gather successful urban entrepreneurs and professionals who will be able to engage with youth as volunteer mentors. Partners on board thus far are Indy Urban Acres and New Age Provisions. For the underserved minority youth enrolled, the YUFEP will provide weekly experiential learning sessions, mentoring support, and one on one discussions with the successful entrepreneurs in the community, as well as mentoring support throughout the first year of their business endeavor. 

To support Objective 1, in addition to learning how to grow and market fresh foods, topics to be covered in the workshops and activities include how to start and conduct an urban farming business, sustainable agriculture topics, and what makes an entrepreneur successful. Youth will be exposed to urban farming entrepreneurial projects that will help them to learn how to create, start and run a small urban farming business. To select youth eligible for this program, the project will be advertised through local urban agriculture youth programs. Forty selected youth will be notified and will attend an orientation where guidelines and commitment to completing the project will be outlined.

First activity.  Once we gather the information from participants, we will launch our training program based on the preliminary data collected from the first evaluation. Training topics will include sustainability topics such as soil health, sustainable production, selling and marketing, risk factors, creating SMART goals, ordinances and land use, water quality, etc. will be included in the training and will be conducted by project team members and identified community partners (see support letters). We will draw from existing teaching resources (as stated in prior section) to use in training and education activities, improving or adapting as needed. 

The second activity will be to identify and establish additional partners that will expand the program, as well as community volunteers to serve as instructors and mentors for the program. Mentors will be chosen from the volunteers and local entrepreneurs with skill sets in coaching and advising mentees, and those that match interests of the youth business plans. This process is started with the seed funding project and additional partners will be identified and established.

The third activity. During the training, we will track youth on their progress in knowledge and entrepreneurship skill acquisition. This will be done through weekly journaling that will be done by youth. We anticipate them to make audios/videos that describe what they applied, how this framed their businesses, why they are interested in a particular type of a business, what that business means for them, how they see this as an opportunity to help strengthening their community through a business plan and contribute towards the supply of fresh produce within the community. Most of the criteria for the successful business plan will be graded and selected based on its feasibility, impact and how it fits into the current community needs which is to increase the supply of fresh produce within the community to improve its healthy eating.

The fourth activity will be to conduct a post-evaluation. The main goal for this step is to assess the youth’s knowledge and skills acquired related to urban agriculture and entrepreneurship. There will be also surveys and interviews as it was done in the pre-evaluation. Some of the engaging questions will ask them about what they got out of the training, how the training has helped them, how the mentoring helped them, any skill sets gained or if there are any missing skills, they feel that they wish could have gained from the training?

To support Objective 2, we will evaluate and provide start up assistance for youth developed business plans and programming developed in objective one. Youth will organize, create and present their projects, that show potential to be successful with startup capital and business support so that they can apply what they learned by running their proposed small business. There is need to provide micro grants to youth created small business plans developed as a result of YUFEP because many of these youth are underserved and have families and communities without the resources to invest in youth’s start-up. Providing micro grants as start-up will benefit those who have a good business plan, yet can’t allocate startup funds or other resources needed to get started. FHC and project leaders will facilitate a method for determining allocation of the micro grants based on youth work on program timelines, assignments, goals, and their final business plans. In order to provide equal opportunities to those who will not meet all the criteria to get the micro-grants, youth not receiving microgrants will join those awarded as interns so that they can learn and improve on their projects for the next selection cycle. Mentoring of the new businesses will be tracked in the following year.

 The fifth activity will consist of micro-grants allocation. For this goal, we will select local experts in urban agriculture entrepreneurship (farmers, gardeners, local entrepreneurs, youth program leaders) so that they can determine who gets the grant based on the feasibility and the contribution of the project will bring in the community in relation to increase the supply of fresh food and/or economic growth within the community.  Once grants are awarded, businesses will be monitored to track the highs and lows, why it might be hard to achieve the goals that have been set by youth, potential issues that might be faced by the awardees, how mentoring will help them and any support they might be looking for that can enable them to thrive in their businesses.  

The sixth activity will consist of monitoring and evaluating for each project that received a loan. On this step, there will be visits on the sites where projects will be conducted and youth will be interviewed and surveyed to evaluate their successes or failures in their business. Mentors will engage with youth on a monthly basis for a period of one year. This is expected to provide substantial support for the youth participants.

To support Objective 3, conducting a case study to thoroughly evaluate the project, with in depth interviews, evaluations and observations. Effectively, objective 3 is embedded in Objectives 1 and 2 by the nature of the evaluation of the work.

The seventh activity will be to analyze and synthesize the data and activities into a handbook that will be useful for those who wish to model our work. This will be accomplished by exploring all aspects of the project within the context of sustainability using a variety of data sources (interviews, surveys, observations, journaling).  This helps us see the project as a potential model for other youth serving organizations through multiple lenses. This approach is based in a constructivist paradigm, recognizing the importance of the human element but doing so with objectivity. This method allows the participant and the investigator to have a collaborative relationship, and enables the participants to tell their stories. Doing so will help us see the how and why of the workings of this proposed project, and how it might serve as a model for other youth serving organizations.

Challenges

Challenges to be addressed include managing youth as new farmer entrepreneurs and the pitfalls that may come with this task.  While business planning and strong mentoring program will be in place, taking a planned risk as a young person requires the right mix of circumstances and support for a successful outcome. We will mitigate this risk by building in accountability for monetary distribution, mentorship responsibility, and end of project reporting. Micro grants for youth business plans will be implemented similar to beginning farmer rancher programs, where distribution of funds is dependent on achievement of goals and accountability to the sponsor. 

In the first months of this proposed project we are planning to identify and solidify relationships with community partners willing to work with the youth program via connections that already exist with FHC and through our seed funding that has started in the spring of 2022. At the time of the writing of this proposal, all of those individuals were not yet fully identified, and we recognize that having all of this group on board would make a stronger proposal. However, bringing partners on board to an idea, and not a funded project can be challenging, given cultural needs of the neighborhood. Building those relationships takes time, which we have begun the process with our seed funding, by adding Indy Urban Acres and New Age Provisions Farms as examples of successful farming enterprises and Soul Food Project, Mother Loves Garden, and Green Thumb Patrol as youth programming partners.  

2023 Pilot

Our study evaluates participants’ life skills, entrepreneurial skills, and mindset towards sustainable agriculture content and community collaborations with Felege Hiywot Center’s Youth Urban Farming Entrepreneurship Program (YUFEP). We worked through an established partnership between Purdue University and the Felege Hiywot Center’s (FHC) Youth Urban Farming Program in Indianapolis IN.

Data analysis

A mixed-methods design was used to gather quantitative and qualitative data through interviews, surveys, and focus group discussions. Planned qualitative data came from stakeholder interviews and participant focus groups. Data was analyzed and compared using SPSS, R, and Excel. For questions that involved self-assessment responses, we employed magnitude coding (Saldana, 2021) where responses were scored as follows: Strong Disagree = 1, Somewhat disagree = 2, Neither agree nor disagree = 3, Somewhat agree = 4, and Strongly agree =5. However, when participants were asked to evaluate the program's impact on their career plans/aspirations, their responses were coded as follows: Not at all = 1, A little = 2, Some = 3, and A lot =4. In both cases, students’ responses were cumulative and reported as a frequency of each response category.

Demographics

The survey was conducted in both pre-and post-survey formats to capture the demographic distribution of participants. A total of 28 participants completed the pre-survey. In comparison, only 23 participants responded to the post-survey because some participants had dropped out of the program before the post-survey was conducted (Table 1).

Table 1. Demographics of participants at the Purdue FHC program.