Groundwork’s Building Resilient Communities (BRC) program is hard at work in Petoskey, Michigan. In 2024, we provided staff support and $2,000 for The Nehemiah Project homeless shelter to increase capacity to cold-store locally grown food and also to provide residents with cooking kits that they take with them when they leave the shelter so they can scratch-cook meals and improve their nutritional health. And of course, as the shelter serves more locally grown food, more dollars will flow to local farm families.

The Nehemiah Project is a Northern Michigan adult homeless shelter serving their neighbors in need since 1988. Staff and volunteers serve up to 25 individuals daily and more than 200 individuals annually. They provide hot dinners daily at no cost to residents and have an onsite food pantry available, too.

Guided by a deep commitment to residents’ health, The Nehemiah Project team identified two main objectives for its BRC project:

Objective 1: Upgrade the refrigerator to increase cold storage capacity and thereby provide more nutritious meals onsite using more fresh, local produce.

Objective 2: Provide cooking kits to departing residents that include educational materials related to nutrition, such as tips for meal preparation, recipes, and a list of farms and other places where residents can buy locally grown food. The cooking kits also include new pots, pans and utensils for creating healthy from-scratch meals.

The Nehemiah Project team originally wanted to use the grant to install raised garden beds for residents. They realized, however, that staff capacity was too limited, and that building and maintaining raised garden beds was simply too big of a job at the time. The BRC program is flexible enough to allow for course-correction, so Groundwork staff worked closely with Nehemiah Project staff to determine another way to use the funds in an efficient and effective way. The team was especially thrilled to offer residents the tools needed—via cooking kits—to make nourishing meals when residents move on to create homes of their own after leaving the shelter.

The Nehemiah Project is a place of shelter and hope for many people in Northern Michigan. The organization’s BRC project is on track to achieve its objectives and create many opportunities for learning and growth for the community. By increasing the capacity to serve locally grown food, The Nehemiah Project will not only improve the health of residents, but also increase the revenue flowing to local farms. (And rest assured, a raised-bed garden is still in the shelter’s vision for the future.)

Cori Fitzpatrick, Groundwork Farm to Institution Specialist
cori.fitzpatrick@groundworkcenter.org