GOOD
Community
Harvesting Hope
Tiger Mountain Foundation unites communities through gardening BY ANGEL FUCHS
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Tiger Mountain Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering communities through gardening. The organization provides job skills and supports workforce development through neighborhood revitalization. It works to beautify dilapidated neighborhoods through Agri-Landscape. This incorporates fruits, vegetables, nuts, flowers, and herbs into the landscaping of a home's front or back yards, or empty neighborhood lots into bountiful food supplies. This initiative helps alleviate food scarcity and reduces the urban heat island effect.
The vision for Tiger Mountain Foundation came to founder Darren Chapman in 2003. At the time, Chapman lived in Los Angeles and was running on empty from a career in nightclub management. “I was living life in the fast lane,” Chapman says. “And I wanted to wake up in the morning and know I was doing good; I wanted to change my life around, change that narrative.” Gardening was a big part of Chapman's life growing up in south central L.A. He recalls his family's backyard garden yielding not only food, but also hope. Chapman knew that gardening feeds not only the body, but also the mind and soul, and he knew that the planting, harvesting, and sharing had the power to bring communities together.
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The Tiger Mountain Foundation officially became a 501c3 in 2007, and has been growing fresh, wholesome food and communal unification ever since. The organization strives to restore pride in neighborhoods through the beautification of vacant lots while inspiring people to volunteer and engage in their communities. They also provide local youth with the skills needed to prepare them to enter the workforce. “We provide on-the-job opportunities through landscaping, planting in community gardens, and selling the produce they grow at local farmers’ markets,” says Chapman. It was actually at one of those farmers’ markets where
