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Mission of Mary Cooperative

This organization was born out of a community of Lay Marianists living and serving in the Twin Towers neighborhood. They were confronted with two pressing issues facing the neighborhood—abandoned land and limited access to fresh, healthy produce. Their solution? Transform uncultivated green spaces into vegetable gardens and share the harvest with neighbors. In 2009 they planted a single garden. Today, they manage a network of 6 urban farming plots and grow over 75 different varieties of fruits and vegetables.

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Mission of Mary Cooperative is a catalyst and partner for sustainable urban development in the community of Dayton, Ohio. With four main focus areas (Developing Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development, Operating an Urban Food System, Operating an Urban Sustainability Learning Center, and Engaging the Twin Towers Neighborhood), Mission of Mary has countless opportunities for our Marianist family to support their work with event-specific/one-time volunteer roles, as well as dedicated volunteers who commit to a set amount of time each week/month. 

 

Through the Dayton Family Council, we are committed to supporting Mission of Mary Cooperative through these two events:

 

  • Marianist Family Day of Service: Individuals and Marianist communities are invited to join the staff of MMC to help prepare gardens and plant seeds one Saturday in June each year.

 

  • Annual Farm to Fork Dinner in October: Volunteers are needed throughout the week leading up to the event for 2 hours to all day doing things like harvesting crops, cutting food, making flower arrangements, setting up the venue, helping run the silent auction, bartending, sponsor financially, donate items for silent auction, clean up the next day. It’s a matter of signing up with Dan at MMC via the website, go to “volunteer” tab.

 

We encourage you to visit their website to learn more about additional ways to get involved at MMC. H https://www.missionofmary.org/

 

Here is a snapshot of some of the ways you can advance the mission of Mary at the farm; please contact Mission of Mary directly to support any of these initiatives: 

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Neighborhood Food Council – need good facilitators, listeners, and note-takers to capture what the neighbors are saying are their needs.  Also be willing to set the table and offer food to the neighbors.

 

Summer Garden Festival – MMC offers free food to the neighborhood. About 50-100 people attend. It’s an opportunity to build relationships in the neighborhood. Have sack races and activities for kids. Set-up tables and chairs, serve food, clean-up.

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Remainder of the season:

Mission of Mary would like to have “stable” or “rooted” volunteers that come on a regular schedule for a set amount of time each week. (This could look like every week for 2 hours, or 2x a month for a certain amount of time. It is flexible to meet individual schedules.)

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Produce Preparers:

  1. Work in garden

  2. Weed garden

  3. Harvest the produce

  4. Wash the produce

  5. Prepare the CSA boxes

  6. Hand out the CSA boxes

 

Fundraising Helpers:

  1. Write thank you letters to donors

  2. Make connections with potential donors or partners

 

Marketing/Design Helpers:

  1. People who can do bulk mail to all of the neighbors in the area to communicate what MMC does

  2. People who can design the Farm to Fork Invitation and prepare it for bulk mailing

 

Education Supporters:

  1. People who like to work with 3–5-year-olds and talk about and conduct activities about natural science once/week on site. 

  2. Host Ruskin Elementary at the farm 2x/year to do activities

 

Maintenance and development of the Mary Grotto:

  1. Plants need to be watered 1x/week

  2. Open to ideas of how to improve it (perhaps an Eagle Scout project)

 

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