Thrive for Good: Helping People Grow Their Own Food to Combat Hidden Hunger

All around us, people go hungry. Not necessarily in the obvious way of lacking food, but rather, in lacking nutrients that come from good food. More than 2 billion people subsist on low-cost foods that don’t provide enough nutrition to prevent disease, or to adequately grow and develop as children. Around the world, highly processed, chemically grown, low-nutrient foods are usually the cheapest calories for families living below the poverty line. Caloric needs are met, but at the cost of serious micronutrient deficiencies. 

Thrive for Good is on a mission to end this epidemic of hidden hunger by helping people help themselves. If a family can’t afford nutritious foods, what’s to stop them from growing it themselves? Well – initial startup money, training, tools and seeds. Thrive for Good provides training, simple tools, and starter seeds for only $15 per person, and encourages people to grow their own food. They call these Life Gardens, and while they certainly work in rural settings where available land is often underutilized, the initiative states they are just as successful in urban areas and food deserts. Life Gardens are adaptable, and can work as vertical gardens and community garden projects. The gardens grow foods that are precisely chosen for their ability to build immunity, support child development, and prevent long-term illness.  

Thrive for Good has successful projects in over 20 countries and they envision operating in over 50 countries within the next decade. The initiative claims to be versatile and able to be implemented in various geographical settings, including tropical, temperate, and arid climates. Their techniques include water conservation practices such as rainwater harvesting and efficient irrigation, making them suitable for arid and semi-arid regions. According to the initiative, Life Gardens maximize land and water use, and create a “closed loop” by harvesting seeds and turning plant waste into compost to regenerate the soil. Thrive for Good claims the organic gardens are scalable and adaptable, and regenerative – enriching the soil, preventing erosion, contributing to biodiversity and capturing more carbon. Importantly, Life Gardens are sustainable and give people a sense of agency and community connection, building local skills, knowledge, and prosperity between people.  

Currently, Thrive is registered in Canada, United States, Kenya, South Africa and Eswatini. According to the initiative, they are currently working with close to 300,000 people to grow their own food, and the last 3 years, the number of people impacted has grown by more than 65% each year. With the funding to keep growing by even 50% per year, by the end of 2033, they will have 90,000 garden projects feeding more than 10 million people. They claim this impact can materialize on only 23,000 acres of land, about half the size of Stockholm.  

As the old saying goes, if you give a man a fish, he’ll have enough to eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll have enough to eat forever. Thrive for Good is on a mission to help people have enough to eat for a lifetime.  

Learn more about Thrive for Good.

Written by Sarah Souli
Photos provided by Thrive for Good

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