This year, Gardening Know How’s School and Community Garden Sponsorship Program was fortunate enough to help support 20 gardens with $1,000 each. These gardens represent a wide array of community and school programs, from Florida to Saskatchewan and many places in between. Each has its own unique and powerful story, and we’re excited to share them with you. Every other week we’ll highlight one of our sponsorship recipients to help spread the word about how amazing they really are. This week we’re featuring Caridad Gardens.

Founded in 2010, Caridad is a nonprofit that works tirelessly to help and humanize the homeless. Started by Merideth Spriggs, who herself overcame homelessness, the organization has been recognized nationally for the good that it does in Las Vegas and southern Nevada.

Caridad Gardens is an exciting new project that will expand the organization into urban gardening. Partnering with local market Fergusons’ Downtown, Caridad will be starting a “freight farm” in a donated shipping container, making a totally mobile, totally urban gardening site.

There are two main goals that Caridad Gardens would like to achieve:

• First, it will function as a therapeutic and training opportunity for formerly homeless vets enrolled in the U.S. Vets’ transitional shelter program, helping them meet vital employment requirements, earning them their farming certificates and, hopefully, leading to full-time employment with partnering farms. And along the way, it’ll give them important community development and fresh produce.

• Second, the gardens will be the site of free monthly educational programs for children in impoverished neighborhoods throughout southern Nevada.

Caridad is already doing so much good in Las Vegas. With the grant from Gardening Know How, Caridad Gardens will be able to touch the lives of formerly homeless vets and kids eager to learn. We’re proud to be able to help them realize this dream.