AAMHC & PFC Farms Growing New Beginnings Program Overview
Growing New Beginnings Program serves County residents with disabilities including other barriers to employment. Creating pathways towards self-sufficiency through vocational agricultural counseling, assessments, community service solutions, agricultural job training and job placement support services makes Growing New Beginnings Program a bridge for success in the community.
For more than 7 years, Growing New Beginnings Program has partnered with Homedepot, community based organizations and the community to provide agricultural based career opportunities for thousands of county residents. Together with our community partners, Growing New Beginnings Program offers paid training and transitional work experience, hands-on job training, job coaching and mentoring in the agricultural field. We are dedicated to enhancing our clients' self-esteem, dignity, transitional job readiness skills, and creating opportunities for self-sufficiency with an emphasis on living healthy.
Through the PFC Farms Farmers Markets and AAMHC / PFC Farms Showcase Garden, our program provides fancy organic produce, excellent service, quality and value to our business partners. The Growing New Beginnings Program, allows individuals to gain skills and prepare for re-engagement into the workforce though the support of agriculture based support services.
Assessment and Rehabilitation Methods Summary
- Need: To help those gain necessary skills deemed transferable in the real workforce environment while protecting their well-being.
- Intervention: The Growing New Beginnings Program helps disabled and or disadvantaged individuals gain the necessary skills with the support of the agriculture industry needed to become successful in the workforce and at home.
- Results: Since 2012, the Growing New Beginnings Program has helped over 3,000 families develop vital solutions for growing in diverse conditions. Needs vary based on each family, family eating condition and individuals who prefer to consume certified organic produce that can be tracked to an organic farm.
Description
Families with disabilities and disadvantages are faced with added challenges that day-to-day living brings. Compact living conditions, lack of available resources, uneven community based services, and lack of healthy lifestyle tools often need to be handled differently for families with disadvantages or with disabilities. In agriculture, time is of the essence – if a family suffers from access to quality produce and or is unable to obtain access, the family suffers and financial loss can follow. Many types of financial loss can arrise including but not limited to: mentally, physically, emotionally or chemically imbalanced births due to the lack of access to quality produce. The culture of privacy and self-sufficiency that accompanies the agricultural industry offers strategic solutions that aid in Growing A New Beginning. Growing New Beginnings Program provides solutions that aid in the assistance allowing a clear connection between those need rehabilitation agriculture based support services and the families whom prefer to consume fresh organic produce at home or through PFC Farms Farmers Market.
Since 2018, Growing New Beginnings Program has been providing agricultural vocational rehabilitation support services, counseling, and S.T.E.M. Educational Services to the community.
Growing New Beginnings Program has not only developed a strategy that helps families and organizations regain or continue their healthy living food solutions and implement sustainable systems that protect vital cells in the human body. Growing New Beginnings Program and parthers understands that losing the ability to farm extends beyond the loss of one's health or life. It often means losing many families homestead, more birth defects, premature births, random deaths and other tragic events passed on from previous generations due to the lack of access to quality food. Growing New Beginnings Program encourages a contractual plan that is suitable for 2022 - 2030.
- In 2021, the Home Depot Foundation awarded a grant to Growing New Beginnings Program
- In 2020 PFC Farms received its Certification for Organic Produce
- In 2020 CDFA certified PFC Farms in over 90 lines of produce
- In 2020 Growing New Beginnings Program Started Phase 1 on its Showcase Garden
- In 2019 PFC Farms attended 250 farmer market events
- In 2019 PFC Farms Released its Salt, Sodium Free Seasoning Lines
- In 2019 PFC Farms & AAMHC Expanded its operation to 7 Acres
- In 2016 Growing New Beginnings Program identified its 1 Farm operation and Name
- In 2016 Pacific Fertilizer Company (PFC) Filed for a Patent for Ocean Based Minerals and open its 1st Farm on 3 Acres. Pacific Fertilizer Company Farms, (PFC Farms)
Services offered
Growing New Beginnings Program Specialists assist individuals and families with vital information that pertains to the agriculture industry. Our services include; cour referral services, agriculture employment rehabilitation services, Adult day care gardening services, foster care youth services, workforce readiness services, re-entry support services and co-operative growing support services.
Included Training courses:
- Confidential on-farm worksite assessment - Project Management
- Identification of Agriculture technology - Project Management
- Gathering multiple cost estimates for project - Project Management
- Farmers Markets Preparation and Packaging - Project Management
- Farmers tasks that must be completed daily - Project Management
- Customer Service Training in the Agriculture Field
The Growing New Beginnings Program also:
- Provides training to the Family or Corporate Staff
- Troubleshoots the most difficult and complex cases with growing projects
- Strategic Partners Support for complex projects or extended agriculture based programs.
- Co-Operative Agreements based on Partnering Lot Size
Results
Growing New Beginnings Program values its Showcase garden and identifies it as extremely successful. Since 2019, Pacific Fertilizer Company Farms & African American Mental Health Coalition and its clients who have been jointly served by Growing New Beginnings Program have achieved a 95% success rate in providing agriculture transitional support services. In almost all cases, technology and adaptations were implemented in order to maintain a co operative based system that provides services with measurable outcomes to the client and consumer.
Challenges
A significant investment of time was necessary to develop a common understanding among program partners.
Replication
One key factor in the success of the FARM program is the organization's knowledge of farming and agriculture, combined with its expertise in rehabilitation technology.
Investing in developing relationships among vocational rehabilitation agencies and nonprofit partners to provide these services proved not only to be a cost-effective investment, but also helped to preserve families, communities, and a way of life.
Training Module Access
Click here: https://pfcfarms.org/index.php/training-portal
Contact Information
Southern California
African American Mental Health Coalition
909.571.4964
Riverside County, California
PFC Farms Growing New Beginnings Program
619.990.9999
Topics
Agricultural Rehabilitation Support Services
Families with Disabilities
People with disadvantages
States served
California, Arizona, Nevada
Date Updated
June 15, 2022