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Continuing The Walls Project momentum of expanding in response to the economic effects of COVID-19, Praxair contributed $2,500 towards The Walls Project's programs. More from Praxair: Caring is something with which Chris Schilling can agree. An instrumentation & electrical technician for Linde’s Geismar facility near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Schilling became intrigued by a local project gaining widespread attention during the holiday weekend honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Walls Project started with efforts to invigorate blighted neighborhoods with brightly colored murals.  As the organization has evolved, the projects have expanded to painting and light yard work, as well as workforce training initiatives for community members.  Schilling organized Linde volunteers hopes to grow participation, with opportunities for our local technical teams to volunteer with local scholarship recipients. For Schilling, the Walls Project breaks down walls and invigorates a sense of community among area residents who live in various parts of the area. It’s all a part of being a good neighbor.

Production at the farm is ramping up quickly, and to help Baton Roots safely do so, Capital Area United Way has awarded the expansion a $1000 grant for PPE equipment. With this, Baton Roots will be able to supply enough PPE for the new farmhands, as well as any volunteer or Hustle & Grow trainee helping at the farm. THANK YOU CAUW! If you'd like to apply for a similar PPE grant, applications are still open!

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has granted $33,000 toThe Walls Project, which will use the money to grow more produce in North Baton Rouge. The grant is from the Foundation's Emergency Relief Fund for responding to COVID-19. Production of fruits and vegetables at The Walls Project's Howell Park community farm will rise tenfold to 200,000 pounds per year. The nonprofit is also setting up satellite farms on campuses of Scotlandville Magnet High School,Glen Oaks Senior High School and Capital Friendship. The Emergency Relief Fund has issued $244,000 in grants since it was established in March. Grants from the fund are listed at this link:https://lnkd.in/eAydNsn

In celebration of Juneteenth, artist Emily LaCour felt impassioned to sell a meaningful piece and donate proceeds to our organization to help continue our work in Baton Rouge. Emily, a talented oil painter, currently explores expression through figurative abstracts, focusing on movement and color to convey an experience. You can see more of Emily's works on her Instagram or website. I’ve held onto this piece since 2015, and in celebration of Juneteenth, I’m doing the following. This is a painting of one of the beds in the slave quarters at the Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. When I moved back, I felt compelled to sit with these spaces. We used to landscape paint out there for class and these structures were blobs of paint in the distance—overlooked and ignored. These quiet spaces held so much—and most importantly, they held tired and oppressed people.

Healthy eating starts in childhood and yet children in Baton Rouge often do not have access to the nutritious foods that leads towards a healthy weight. Baton Roots, through the partnership with HealthyBR, will receive $15,000 to use towards the farm expansion to help relieve childhood obesity in Baton Rouge. When observing the data, it becomes apparent that access and education about healthy foods is a crucial start to helping stem the current rate of 32.1% of Louisiana children being labeled overweight or obese. Baton Roots works with partners from American Heart Association, Top Box Foods Louisiana, and Grow Baton Rouge to help distribute healthy foods to community pick up locations and schools sites. To help families understand the ease of healthy cooking, Baton Roots shares cooking demonstrations through partner organizations like the American Heart Association. Families are shown how to use the ingredients found on the farm and home staples to create healthy and satisfying meals. This is critical to creating a long-lasting impact on health as studies have shown that children who cook with their parents are more likely to remain on a healthy trajectory. In addition to the initiatives of access and education, Baton Roots also trains high school aged students on how to grow food in Hustle & Grow. Trainees are engaged in the best practices of urban farming, putting the ability to grow food right into their backyards. Trainees are also utilized to help share their skills to other youth groups for peer-led education.

Thank You! With the Baton Roots backyard garden kit, families receive the garden bed frame, soil, fertilizer, and starter plants. Families also receive on-site training during the garden build, one-page care instructions, and get exclusive access to our urban farming videos. Thanks to the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, Baton Roots was able to gift five families with Garden-in-a-Box kits to grow fresh food in their own backyards.

The Walls Project Awarded $100,000 National Endowment for the Arts Grant LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio to help develop a master plan for the Community Farm in North Baton Rouge Over a year ago, Baton Roots Community Farm’s groundbreaking at BREC Howell Park signaled a new community-wide investment in North Baton Rouge. Today, with an $100,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Baton Roots is on track to becoming a fresh food oasis in the midst of a food desert. With recent support from the NEA, the nonprofit, Walls Project, which runs Baton Roots, is partnering with LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio to develop a comprehensive master plan and site design for the once underutilized golf course. LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio faculty and students will lend their technical expertise in architecture and landscape architecture to help develop the plan with the local community, HealthyBR, BREC and Build Baton Rouge, the parish’s redevelopment authority. Baton Roots Community Farm grew from the Mayor-President Broome's Geaux Get Healthy coalition to improve the well-being of citizens by promoting active lifestyles and access to fresh foods, primarily in areas where a grocery store is more than a 10 minutes away. “We are honored to be selected by the NEA for this prestigious grant. Baton Roots is the culmination of 8 years of building partnerships to elevate our impact with arts, workforce, and community health programs. The Walls welcomes all residents of Howell Park and leaders from across the city to be a part of the planning process. Together we will explore ideas for community amenities at the farm like a new event pavilion equipped with an outdoor demonstration kitchen, farmers market, and a public art system throughout the entire park to inspire the imagination and encourage intergenerational exercise outdoors." said Casey Phillips, The Walls Project Executive Director. Baton Roots Community Farm opened in January 2019 during MLK Fest with the intergenerational Harmony Garden and is expanding to 4-acres of farm rows to yield 200,000 lbs of fresh food in North Baton Rouge. It currently offers multiple programs, including a youth urban agriculture training program, Hustle & Grow, and ‘Garden-In-a-Box’ which promotes growing backyard gardens to encourage healthy eating and food sustainability in communities. The new NEA Our Town grant will fund the development of a comprehensive master plan for the farm engaging artists, designers, engineers, students and residents to repurpose additional acreage in the abandoned golf course of a flood-prone area of North Baton Rouge. “At the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, our creative faculty and students come together to reimagine communities and spaces. Through our design studios, they put ideas onto paper, which will serve as the blueprint for the Baton Roots Community Farm and community transformation for years to come,” said Traci Birch, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio Director. The Walls Project will collaborate with Chicago-based artist Faheem Majeed to lead discussions with members of the local community, artists and LSU design students to begin the process of developing artistic concepts and ways to integrate art into this part of Baton Rouge that has endured decades of disinvestment, hyper-segregation and systemic poverty. Baton Roots Community Farm is one of 51 nationwide projects awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. “These awards demonstrate the resilience of the arts in America, showcasing not only the creativity of their arts projects but the organizations’ agility in the face of a national health crisis,” said Mary Anne Carter, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “We celebrate organizations like the Baton Roots Community Farm for providing opportunities for learning and engagement through the arts in these times.” LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio faculty and students will lend their technical expertise in architecture and landscape architecture to help develop the plan. “For two years beginning next spring, the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio will organize design studios where our students and professors will work collaboratively with the project’s contracted artists and design consultants to help develop a master plan for the Baton Roots Community Farm. Our intention is to help this valuable community space grow in scope from agricultural programming to creative placemaking by incorporating public art with community gardening, green infrastructure and urban ecology,” said Nicholas Serrano, LSU Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor, who is a principal investigator for the project. For more information on this National Endowment for the Arts grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

BATON ROUGE – Huey and Angelina Wilson Foundation graciously awarded $35,000 to the Futures Fund program to expand its offering to include Baton Rouge Out-of-School Youth. With this, The Walls Project will expand its workforce training offering to include vulnerable, Out-of-School Youth (OSY) participants—individuals 16-24 years old age, who have not completed high school, or have completed high school and are in need of additional training to enter the job market. During the formative years of 16-24 years old, 40% of young people are disconnected from school and work. OSY are more likely to live in poverty than their peers, more likely to work in jobs with low-wages and no benefits, and are twice as likely as their peers to not pursue education beyond a high school diploma. By age 28, just 1% of OSY earn an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree (compared to 36% of their peers). Routinely, OSY experience a lack of access to the opportunities and resources they need to be successful in life and career. The Walls Project will expand its workforce training to include vulnerable, OSY participants.

Baton Roots to Provide Fresh Food Access Year-Round In North BR Baton Roots Community Farm at BREC Howell Park on Winbourne Avenue was planted in 2019 and instantly began programming that invited the community to grow with us. Neighbors of all ages have participated in weekly garden demonstrations and high school students took a deep dive into urban agriculture on the farm. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, our in-person programming has paused, but our fresh food production is poised to see a major increase. At BREC’s Howell Park, the existing Baton Roots farm plot will increase from ¼ acre to expand across the full 4 acres of Baton Roots over the next year. Additionally, our partner sites at three high schools will see an increase in production to a total of one acre. By increasing staff and working deeper with our existing partners, we foresee the capacity to grow an abundance of fresh vegetables for our community. The increase in production will help address issues that the current pandemic has highlighted; underlying health issues in low-income communities and a fragile food system. Through this expansion, our farm network will be able to produce 200,000 pounds of fresh and healthy food that will be directly distributed to our surrounding community. Sincerely, Mitchell Provensal Baton Roots Program Coordinator

Futures Fund Introduces Coding Boot Camps for Adults In 2014, The Futures Fund set out on a mission to provide tech-based programming for teens and young adults in Baton Rouge, LA. Six years of operation and more than one thousand students later, The Futures Fund will offer a refined three-tier coding curriculum in an accelerated adult training: FUTURES FUND CODING BOOT CAMP. Partnered with industry professionals, our CODING BOOT CAMP assists adult learners in taking their first steps toward a brand new career in web-based programming and development. After completing our four-month program, adult graduates are better equipped to pursue one of the multiple pathways toward their ideal industry position. Through this adult offering, The Futures Fund aims to provide robust technical and workplace skills training to Louisianians seeking to (re)enter the workforce through a technology-based career. As just one piece of a greater coalition, The Futures Fund adapts and expands in implementing its COVID-19 response. Sincerely, Cheryl Cummings Futures Fund Program Coordinator

Everyone acknowledges there are basic, essential human needs: food, clothing, and shelter...and food always comes first. To combat the devastating impact COVID-19 The Walls Project is rapidly expanding our fresh food production capacity at the Baton Roots Community Farm and made possible in part with the support of Healthy Blue. In order to meet the anticipated fresh food shortages, Baton Roots is adding additional staff to farm, harvest, pack, distribute, and market produce food grown at the farm. It will take all of us working together to get fresh fruits and vegetables into the hands of the most vulnerable food-insecure families in our city. Please Right now, with so many in need of safe, healthy, and affordable food, we ask you to consider joining Healthy Blue by joining us in this movement to improve the culture of health in Baton Rouge. Please consider making a financial contribution to support this critical work. Stay Healthy. Stay Strong.

Now that the stay-at-home order has been lifted, we are returning back to work! Watch muralist Bryson Boutte continue work on the #ONEROUGE mural "Drawing the Line" starting May 18th - June 1st. Stay tuned to watch live on Facebook by liking our page. This mural, made possible by crowdsourced support, is nestled in Old South Baton Rouge, represents the driver of poverty “Lack of homeownership and escalating rental costs,” as well as Old South’s rich past and potential future. Want to help support the mural's completion? Donate now!