Judith “Zhiizhii” Prince has always felt at home when she’s growing food. Having spent 10 years away from her home in Toronto overseas in Tanzania, plus her experiences in Southern and West Africa and Jamaica, she was inspired by communities of mothers and women everywhere she traveled. She returned to the city here and felt isolated as a single Black mother. Being a chemist, teacher, translator, organizer, and visionary and also spending years living close to nature, Zhiizhii knew that she had to use her experiences and knowledge to bring people together. Ubuntu Community Collective was created by a group of African mothers and caregivers living in various east end neighbourhoods of Toronto with a mission to support each other as we do back home. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Ubuntu Community Collective needed to respond quickly and creatively to the heavy demands placed on mothers. Coming together for mutual support, and doing creative activities to transform our experiences as mothers became a challenge. To solve this dilemma members of the collective focused on nurturing their individual passions and new projects were birthed under lockdown including a virtual yoga business, new partnerships, and the “Grow your Own” seedling giveaway and gardening support group. When Zhiizhii saw the positive impact that growing food had on families and communities on top of supporting her own wellness, the beginnings of Ubuntu Community Farm was born.
“Ubuntu” is a traditional African concept rooted in Nguni culture that roughly translates to “I am because we all are”. The ways of embodying Ubuntu are what we’d consider the root of social economy, co-operation and co-operatives, and solidarity economics. For Ubuntu Community Farm this concept is at the heart of the work they do.
Currently the farm is going into its third season at Downsview park with a half-acre of land. When it first began, they would bring their womens’ group out to the farm to connect on the land with various activities and sell produce at the STOP farmers market. They also had access to land at Adinkra Farm near Barrie where they grew a variety of crops and got families out of the city and into nature. This work brought together multigenerational families, from those who had no growing experience to seasoned farmers. “You had youth asking their grandparents how they grew food back in their homeland. It was bringing families together to do this work.”
With the IRP funding Zhiizhii said: “We expanded our markets and increased the number of farmers markets we did, sold at the farm at our shared farm stand, started a produce box subscription program, and bought equipment.”
“Last year thanks to the IRP funding, we were able to hire 2 people to help on the farm,” says Zhiizhii. “We believe in paying our youth a living wage with paid sick days and this is hard to afford but necessary!”
“Additional funding from a foundation allowed us to subsidize produce boxes so the mothers we serve could access our produce and herbs on a sliding scale; some paid in full, others paid ½ or ¼ price for fresh food every 2 weeks. We did 20 weeks of produce boxes serving between 10-20 families.”
This would be an impressive farm business success story on its own, but connected to the concept of Ubuntu, the community farm includes programs to continue educating and supporting more families in the community.
“We also received additional funding to offer high school students a way to complete their volunteer service hours on the farm, providing skills, training, TTC fare for travel, honoraria for their time and effort. . The youth learned a lot, we learned a lot and inspired many folks to want to be farmers. We plan to expand on this program this upcoming year. We’ll be more structured, I want to have a checklist of goals for them to check off when they’ve accomplished them so they know they can walk away with skills in various areas of farming.”
This year Ubuntu Community Farm is also collaborating with two other neighbouring farms to create a co-op situation to be more productive with their produce box offerings. With all three businesses able to focus on a certain aspect of farm operations, funding opportunities and sales, they’re hoping to increase production and lift some of the administrative burden. “This is the only way to do urban farming, to do it collectively,” says Zhiizhii.
Ubuntu Community Farm received their IRP funding through the Foundation for Black Communities, as a partnership with Community Foundations of Canada. This was the first time a Black-focused, Black-serving and Black-led or “B3” funding organization was established as a Readiness Support Partner with the Investment Readiness Program. Ubuntu Community Farm feels this significant difference, in having a funder who approaches grantees differently, with diverse culturally appropriate ways, including language translation for various language communities connected to the African diaspora as well as a participatory granting approach, inviting community members to support the decision-making process. No one understands community needs better than its own community members. “If I hadn’t had this opportunity with FFBC, I don’t know if I’d have gotten ready,” says Zhiizhii. “They made me really feel seen and appreciated in the work I do. They kept the dialogue open, offered different [grant application] formats like video options and they tried to support communities not everyone can reach. It may take longer and the format [of grants] may not be easily understood, but FFBC is willing to put in the work. I learned about social finance and we had our grant coordinator come to visit the farm. I think social finance is a great model, it’s giving money with a purpose and there’s accountability, you have to prove your impact.” Zhiizhii is hoping for another renewed IRP for further funding, now that her business has grown to a viable level, she needs more funding in order to scale up and truly be investment ready.
For any advice to those looking to apply for funding like the IRP for their social purpose organization, Zhiizhii encourages folks to get involved: “I’d say dive in! Do what you need to do. I’ve gone to many webinars, attended events, joined farmer associations, and talked to other farmers. Connection to other people doing this work is so helpful. Don’t be shy. Be courageous and be brave.”
