Community outreach and volunteer recruiting at City Fruit Seattle often go hand in hand.
Planning ahead is a key factor to increasing the size and scope of your program.
Unlike most Harvest Against Hunger sites, the donor relationship at City Fruit is unique.
City Fruit promotes the cultivation of urban fruit in order to nourish people, build communities and protect the climate.
The fruit tree harvesting at City Fruit is composed mostly of private residential fruit tree harvests. How to create your own fruit tree harvesting work party.
Education is a large part of outreach and brand recognition at City Fruit.
The AmeriCorps*VISTA worked alongside the Orchard Steward Coordinator to create a schedule of monthly work parties that will take place at any of the 14 parks City Fruit stewards.
City Fruit promotes the cultivation of urban fruit in order to nourish people, build community and protect the climate. We help tree owners grow healthy fruit, provide assistance in harvesting and preserving fruit, promote the sharing of extra fruit, and work to protect urban fruit trees.
Our programs include harvesting unwanted fruit from private properties, stewarding and harvesting public orchards, training orchard stewards, and delivering the thousands of pounds of gleaned fruit to organizations who can distribute it to people who need it most: food banks, senior centers, homeless shelters, low-income housing programs, lunch programs, daycares and more.
In late 2013, City Fruit was chosen to take part in Harvest Against Hunger's (formerly Rotary First Harvest) Harvest VISTA program.This VISTA position deviated from the traditional Harvest VISTA as instead of working directly with farms or meal program recipients, the VISTA served as a Community Outreach Coordinator. Their achievements included building new relationships within the community to care for public orchards, speaking with people about City Fruit’s mission at community festivals and events, and building the volunteer base through various programs such as the Ambassador Program.
The VISTA also contributed to blogs, social media outlets, and volunteer newsletters, as well as used Salesforce and the Volunteers for Salesforce plugin to create volunteer opportunities, record hours and keep in contact with all volunteers.