Green Plate Special
Green Plate Special (GPS) is a Seattle-based nonprofit that educates and feeds youth through “seed-to-table” learning. Green Plate Special’s mission is to inspire and empower youth through growing, cooking, and sharing food.
Green Plate Special (GPS) is a Seattle-based nonprofit that educates and feeds youth through “seed-to-table” learning. Their mission is to inspire and empower youth through growing, cooking, and sharing food. Children and adolescents ages 9 to 14 are taught to garden, prepare, and cook their own food on their premises. On average, the organization works with about 700 youths per year, teaching them lifelong skills in cultivating and cooking healthy meals over longer periods of time.
GPS offers classes and summer camps on a “pay what you can” basis to offer equitable access to food education. Families offer an amount they can afford in exchange for sending their children to these programs, reducing the paperwork and stigma affiliated with other needs-based resources. They also work with partner organizations, like schools, within their budgets to help bring students to their garden and kitchen any way they can.
Beneficial State Bank and Green Plate Special were featured on CDBA’s Banking for Good – COVID Crisis Series features. The features highlight how mission-driven banks helping their borrowers stay afloat.
Adopting for Covid-19
Due to Covid-19, GPS has closed their typical programming to comply with shelter-in-place guidelines. However, they have pivoted and used their facilities, expertise, and resources to become a food distribution center. They are receiving donations from their food partners in addition to farming fresh produce from their garden and repackaging them as grocery bags for other organizations, including New Horizons, a teen homeless shelter.
Knowing we couldn’t do programming any longer, we decided to do the next best thing that we knew how to do, and that’s feed people.
– Laura Dewell, Green Plate Special Executive Director
Because they had shut down their programming, Green Plate Special needed to lay off five of their six educators on staff. Once they received the Payroll Protection Program loan from Beneficial State Bank, they were able to re-hire these employees to assist with new grocery distribution operations. In addition to these critical services, GPS is still engaging with the children they teach by posting to their blog and social media ways that they can engage with food while social distancing. This includes plant bingo, scavenger hunts during walks, and a pop quiz about the different parts of a chicken.
We are proud to have supported their application for the Paycheck Protection Program this month, not just for their overall mission, but also their response to Covid-19.
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