Growing Home Collective
GRuB’s Growing Home Collective uplifts the leadership and voices of Black people, many of whom are still experiencing the impacts of the legacy of American oppression and slavery. Our goal is to amplify sacred space for black people to rest, relax, and build resilient community together.
Our collective is open to Black and ADOS individuals of all ages to experience wellness, culture, and ancestral wisdom in the kitchen and on the land. African or Black immigrants, members of the Black Diaspora, and Black people who are of mixed racial/ethnic backgrounds are welcome.
Our collective is REcalling and REvering Black community knowledge around food and its interconnected cultural traditions. We are REclaiming our brilliance, genius, and the truth that our hearts, bodies, hands, and minds have shaped this country--they are this country.
This is not history, it is Ourstory.
Are you interested in getting involved in GRuB’s Growing Home Collective?
Join us! Check the calendar here for the latest events each month. We are multigenerational and welcome Elders, youth, families, and children! For more information email growinghome@goodgrub.org..
Why is the Growing Home Collective Needed?
With Thurston County being a predominantly white community, there's a need for more programs and opportunities that reflect the needs, history, knowledge, and lived experience of Black community members.
The Growing Home Collective does the following:
- Hosts engagement events that provide activities and land access with shared meals, food connection, and learning where the Black community experience is the focus.
- Creates educational resources reflecting Black food, land, and place-based history.
- Supports Black youth and adults to re-educate, reclaim, and re-center land as a place of healing.
- Highlights Black cultural resilience, creativity, and earth wisdom through land, food, and building community.
- Provides a sacred affinity (caucus) space for Black people to center and normalize their experience.
In 2025 the Collective hosted:
- Eight shared meals whether in tandem with a cooking workshop or part of a community celebration.
- Black OurStory Brunch in February with a focus on Black Love of self, lineage, community, food, cultural brilliance.
- Held a spring foraging event at GRuB for harvesting and making plant medicines for health and well-being.
- The 5th annual Juneteenth Jubilee at GRuB for people to more deeply understand the real emancipation of enslaved Black people. Featuring local farm fresh produce of collard greens, kale, onions, turnips, and rhubarb, the menu included a choice of either beans or chicken with rhubarb bbq sauce, cornbread muffins, collard greens, mac 'n' cheese, and strawberry rhubarb cobbler and southern tea cakes with jam.
- Hosted our September volunteer day for Black community members to weed, care for and harvest on the farm.
- The Self-Advocacy & Nature Therapy workshop was co-hosted in October by the Collective and C.A.R.E. led by members of each program. Grounded in the context of healing from historical oppression, the series included hands-on cooking, plant medicine, self-reflection, emotional regulation, mindfulness techniques, and sensory experiences with food and the farm.
Growing Home Collective is GRuB’s programming by and for the Black community.
As GRuB aims to reduce barriers for Black people to access our programs, resources, and leadership opportunities. Arising out of a series of listening sessions with Black community members in 2021, a group of GRuB’s Black community members began to develop culturally specific programming through a caucused-based, Black advisory work group approach.
This group includes Black members and alumni of GRuB's Youth Program, Gardening and Veteran Programs, as well as Black volunteers and community members interested in connecting to GRuB's mission in the Black community.
Stay in touch with us by going to our Upcoming Events webpage to see the Growing Home Collective gatherings on the GRuB calendar or email growinghome@goodgrub.org for more information.
These services were developed in partnership with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) and made possible with the generous funding from Inspire Olympia.
Donate to GRuB’s Growing Home Collective!
Your donation will support GRuB in providing staffing, coordination, facility use, technology resources and member honorariums for work group members’ participation. Your support uplifts opportunities for their access to healthy food, community building and healing relationship with land.
GRuB’s mission is to support healthy food, people, and community through providing skills, leadership and connection to the land. Our organization has historically worked with disengaged youth, food insecure families, veterans, and elders. We are committed to deepen equity as reflected in GRuB’s current strategic plan priorities. Yet we acknowledge that as an organization, we have work to do to create a space beyond inclusion. GRuB’s Growing Home Collective works helps to uplift the leadership of Black people, who are experiencing impacts of the legacy of American oppression and enslavement.
Donate to support grow spaces & resources for the Black communities’ resilience & self-determination.
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