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Green Urban Lunch Box

The Green Urban Lunch Box (GULB) is a food justice 501(c)(3) organization based in Salt Lake City, Utah. For 10 years, GULB’s mission has been to empower people to connect to food and their community by revitalizing urban spaces and building a resilient food culture. GULB envisions a strong network of community centered around the cultivation of fresh and healthy food, they try to create this through 3 distinct programs: Back-Farms, Small Farm Initiative, and FruitShare. 

The Back-Farms program connects volunteer Garden Apprentices with Senior Citizens to build, cultivate and maintain organic gardens in their backyard at no cost to the senior. Each Senior’s garden is assigned a garden apprentice, a volunteer, who while caring for the garden and getting to know the senior, is learning how to garden from one of GULB’s expert staff. The produce that is grown in each garden is shared  between the participating seniors, garden apprentices, and Free Farm Stands at senior centers across Salt Lake County. The Small Farm Initiative (SFI) is a program where beginning urban farmers and advanced growers develop the skills and competencies they need to take their agricultural careers to the next level. Through this program students and interns engage in interactive workshops and onsite field training that will teach them how to farm in urban spaces and make money doing so. The produce received in the CSA’s is grown right on the community farm by the GULB farm staff. The FruitShare program partners with fruit tree homeowners and community volunteers to harvest and distribute food that would otherwise go to waste. In Salt Lake County, thousands of fruit trees grow in homeowner’s backyards, collectively producing hundreds of thousands of pounds of fresh fruit each year. GULB FruitShare staff  lead small groups of volunteers to harvest the fruit, organizing roughly 24 harvests per week during the peak season. The fruit harvested is shared between the homeowner, volunteers, as well as other hunger relief organizations and programs.