faces
By Sarah Robinson
Cultivating Yolanda Owens grows community everywhere she goes
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Growing up, Owens’ parents and grandparents knew the value of getting out into the garden and knowing how to grow their own food, and instilled those values in Owens and her siblings, too. “When I was growing up, we actually used to belong to a coop, a fruit and vegetable co-op,” she says. “That’s so cool nowadays, but I used to be really embarrassed by it. All my friends, they would go to Kroger or Big Bear back then, but we got our fruits and vegetables in a box.” Owens pursued a degree in agricultural communication, specializing in international, social and economic development at OSU, with the original goal of working for a non-governmental organization like USAID to help developing countries become economically stable. That all changed when she began working for the Godman Guild Association in Columbus after graduating. “When I started working there was when I really realized the issues and inequities that we have here in our own food system and our own agricultural system,” she says, “and I was like, I can’t try to go save the world when my home is messed up.” Owens worked with local kids, teaching them about where their food comes from, showing them how to work in the community garden at Weinland Park and using her OSU connections to take them on field trips to the Waterman Dairy Farm. www.pickeringtonmagazine.com
Photos courtesy of Yolanda Owens
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self-declared homegrown Buckeye, Yolanda Owens has been contributing to the central Ohio community from a young age. Today, the Pickerington resident and mom of two is juggling a number of roles in her many communities – she’s the president of the alumni board for The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; she’s one of the founding members of the Black Lactation Circle; she’s helping build the Wigwam Community Gardens in Violet Township and, on top of all that, she owns her own small business, Forage + Black, selling agriculture-themed apparel and goods. Among all her involvements, it’s pretty clear Owens’ passions lie with cultivating plants and people. Each of her communities share a central theme of feeding others. “From a young age, I’ve always had a really great relationship with food,” she says.
