Our Work

It may not be obvious, at first glance, how the two parts of our dual mission — to provide access to healthy food for the community and afford purposeful jobs to individuals with disabilities — fit together. The best way to explain it, we decided, was to create this graphic, which shows how all the different things we do contribute together to make Lynchburg (and the world) a better place. You can also read more details about our programs below.

Purposeful Jobs

Providing meaningful, important work for people with disabilities has been part of Lynchburg Grows’ mission from the beginning. We currently employ four individuals with physical and/or mental disabilities. Our Farm Coach helps them stay on task and encourages them throughout the day.

Our employees deserve the credit for the farm’s harvest of more than 47,000 servings of food in 2020. The harvest supplies our community supported agriculture program, The Veggie Box, and our other programs that help provide access to fresh, healthy food in our community. Read more about those programs below.

FreshRx is a veggie prescription program designed to help people with diet-related illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart problems and stroke. Local doctors identify patients that are willing to make lifestyle changes and prescribe them our program. The patients attend weekly nutrition and cooking classes taught by a nutrition educator from Virginia Cooperative Extension. At the end of each class, participants take home a bag of fresh fruit and produce so that they can try the recipes they learn at home.

The FreshRx program is made possible through the generous support of Centra. Since the program’s first classes in 2017, it has served more than 200 families. Learn more here.

Community Engagement

Nearly all of Lynchburg Grows' day-to-day activities are aimed at serving the local community, from farm events, to group farm tours, to the thousands of pounds of food distributed to local nonprofits, with the help of our produce-growing partnership with St. John’s Episcopal Church.

We donate some of our harvest each week to drop-off locations, including The Miller Home, the Community Access Network clinic, and Miriam’s House, where people can take whatever items they want for free, and also to the Salvation Army and Lynchburg Daily Bread, for preparation into meals for the homeless and hungry.

We believe everyone should have access to fresh, healthful food, no matter their socioeconomic status or geographic location. Support from the community makes our work toward this goal possible.