A Healthy Partnership: Creating Food Sovereignty with Healthy Day Partners

Published On: January 23rd, 2024By Categories: Must Read, Partnerships4.1 min read

For Mim Michelove, CEO & president of the non-profit Healthy Day Partners, hunger relief is about more than simply distributing food. Michelove believes that food sovereignty is the solution to food insecurity. Her non-profit empowers food-insecure populations to grow their own food and be less reliant on outside resources. Because of its complimentary mission to end hunger in San Diego, Feeding San Diego first partnered with Healthy Day Partners back in February 2023.

On the first and third Saturdays of every month, you can find Michelove or her volunteers at Feeding San Diego’s Produce Pantry. After community members have picked up their food from Feeding San Diego, they can receive a Grab & Grow Garden kit for growing healthy food at home. Grab & Grow Gardens® are garden kits. They contain at least two nutritious, seasonally appropriate, well-rooted seedlings with growing instructions in multiple languages. To address some of the barriers food-insecure individuals and families have to growing food—like low or no land access—the kits provide directions for container growing and in-ground growing for each seedling variety.

A smiling woman stands behind a table with paper bags

Mim with her seedlings at Feeding San Diego’s Marketplace

Growing a Food Sovereignty Movement

In 2023, Healthy Day Partners provided 4,150 Grab & Grow Gardens® to neighbors at the Produce Pantry at Feeding San Diego. Significantly, this partnership with Feeding San Diego allows Michelove and her team to connect with hundreds of neighbors and share her non-profit’s mission directly with community members.

“For me, the most heartwarming aspect of this experience lies in hearing the stories of success. Particularly answering gardening questions, witnessing the expressions of gratitude from those receiving the free gardens, understanding the cultural fruits and vegetables people want us to cultivate for their gardens, and forging connections with the individuals we serve,” Michelove tells us. “It’s more than just a program. It’s a joyful cultural exchange filled with recipe sharing, gardening anecdotes, cooking insights, and even the exchange of homemade holiday gifts.”

Expanding Reach Through Partnership

The partnership marks a significant milestone for Healthy Day Partners. It allows them to directly engage with neighbors experiencing food insecurity. To go beyond traditional hunger-relief models, we must empower individuals to cultivate their own food. This ability fosters resilience against food system disruptions and climate changes. Recognizing the benefits of locally sourced food for personal health and the planet, this collaboration embodies a transformative approach.

“The leadership, staff, and volunteers at Feeding San Diego with whom we collaborate are truly exceptional. They are driven at their core to increase access to healthy food and improve the health and quality of life for San Diego’s food-insecure community. The love and dignity embedded in every effort by Feeding San Diego seamlessly align with the core values of Healthy Day Partners – Equity, Social Responsibility, Diversity & Inclusion, and Environmental Stewardship,” Michelove shares.

A woman wearing a black jacked with the words "Grow Food, End Hunger, Save the Planet" on the back

Mim shows off her custom jacket

Healthy Day Partners is currently raising funds to expand its programming with Feeding San Diego. An innovative extension to Grab & Grow Gardens®, the Straight 2 the Plate® Mobile Garden Classroom, is set to launch in 2024.

The Straight 2 the Plate® program addresses key barriers to home gardening in urban areas, such as low land ownership and limited transportation access. Gardening workshops will “pop up” at food distributions, affordable housing complexes, local tribes, and military communities. Mobile classroom participants will construct and take home portable seasonal gardens in 5-gallon buckets and windowsill containers. In addition to the hands-on experience of creating these instant gardens, participants receive gardening tools and multi-language handbooks, fostering confidence in year-round crop cultivation.

Community First

For Feeding San Diego, it is essential to add wraparound services to neighbors we serve whenever possible. We do so by working with other non-profits with similar missions that provide different solutions to the problem. Our organization is committed to providing our community with multiple resources to address the root causes of hunger.

“The act of empowering a community to cultivate their own food is truly special and has fostered the blossoming of many meaningful relationships,” Michelove tells us. “While our distributions introduce us to new faces regularly, we also encounter individuals who have previously nurtured our seasonal seedlings. People take pleasure in sharing their success stories. They showcase photos of their abundant harvests and openly seek expert gardening advice to enhance their skills. One recurring theme in the feedback we receive is the sheer delight of those who successfully embark on their first successful gardening journey.”

Get Involved

There are many ways to help provide food sovereignty for our community. All non-profits rely on dedicated volunteers, including Feeding San Diego and Healthy Day Partners. We are thankful to those who give time or give funds to support our missions. However you decide to get involved, the community will benefit from your generosity.