The Charleston Parks Conservancy was honored to receive a call from Volvo’s Charleston office informing us that we had been selected from 90 local non-profit organizations to receive a surprise grant award from the international Volvo office in Sweden under their Volvo for Life giving initiative and in celebration of Volvo’s 10th year in Charleston.
On March 31, we were invited to a “fika,” a Swedish coffee break with snacks (and possibly our new favorite tradition), at the Volvo headquarters along with eight other incredible non-profits and given the best news – the Conservancy was awarded an impactful grant to continue to grow our food forest initiative to a second location.
Mulberry Food Forest has reached its first year establishment period and is beginning to produce free organic food, while the maintenance load is decreasing as the trees establish. This allows the Conservancy and our partners to begin shifting gears at Mulberry to education initiatives designed to empower the community to harvest, preserve and use the wide range of food provided by the food forest. This frees up the resources we need to establish additional food forest locations in Charleston.
Since our announcement last year, five municipalities and countless neighborhoods have reached out to the Conservancy for help planting a food forest in their communities. This was the exact goal of this initiative and why the SC Forestry Commission awarded the Conservancy the funding needed to establish the Mulberry Food Forest. The Conservancy provides advice, toolkits, and more to other cities that want to emulate this while researching available city land in underserved neighborhoods to expand our food forest footprint.
The Conservancy has identified two sites – Shaw Community Center on the Eastside, and the Maryville/Ashleyville neighborhood in West Ashley as ideal locations for our next food forests. We have worked with our partners at the City of Charleston on the necessary approvals and are committed to funding the establishment of food forests in these two new sites in 2025.
The Volvo for Life award takes us a huge step forward to realizing that dream, and the Conservancy is so grateful for their contribution.