Growing From the Heart promotes healthy food, sharing
HANCOCK, Mich. (AP) — Dr. Michelle Seguin of the Portage Health Foundation has banded together with other like-minded health food lovers to share that love with the community by forming a group called Growing From the Heart.
“In 2020, right when the pandemic started, we developed a program that was kind of modeled off the nationwide program called Plant a Row for the Hungry, which encourages people to plant literally an extra row in their garden to donate to food pantries,” Seguin said.
Growing From the Heart began as a mission to donate home grown produce to those in need during the pandemic, The Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton reports.
“Instead of focusing only on the food pantries during the pandemic, because we knew that a lot of people wanted food, and needed food during that time, we wanted to promote what was already going on, which was gifting and sharing with our neighbors,” Seguin explained. “We were also reaching out to the food pantries to see if they would accept fresh produce, and then facilitate that, and encourage people like, ‘Hey, I have 60 pounds of zucchini. What do I do with it?’ instead of doing a ding-dong dash and dropping stuff off, which is great, you can drop it off at Little Brothers on the third Monday of the month, in Calumet at the Free Store on Wednesdays. We facilitated those kinds of relationships.”
With the pandemic seemingly winding down, Growing From the Heart took on more of