Volunteer Spotlight: Redeeming Grace Community

Redeeming Grace Community Church of Loganville, GA brought their high school youth group to work with CSM on June 13^th and 14^th. While here, the youth group did a variety of projects; they worked alongside Aaron painting and caulking the exterior of the Faulkner family house in Smithfield, showed off their construction skills on the new woodworking shed behind CSM, and sorted donations in the warehouse. They were an incredible source of help, and another wonderful volunteer group bringing hope and help to our communities.

Four Redeeming Grace highschoolers help paint
edges around the home’s windows    

Much needed caulking filled up cracks around the
windows to help bring the home up to code    

The ceiling being installed inside CSM’s new workshop    

Muscles for CSM!   

A majority of donations from Wal-Mart being
consolidated into bags    

CFGB Grant Awarded to CSM!

We have been so encouraged with the recent news that The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has awarded Christian Service Mission a $25,000 grant to expand our sustainable community agricultural projects for alleviating food insecurity with aquaponics and hydroponics gardening. Aquaponics is a food growing method that produces both fish and plants in a complimentary closed-loop water system. Hydroponics is a gardening method using a mineral nutrient solution in water rather than soil. These aqua-garden methods allow us to explore the viability of urban organic farming in our city and surrounding areas, regardless of the season or the presence of soil toxins.

This new funding from CFGB will allow the Garden Ministry to expand on our current research and development in successful and sustainable community agricultural applications with our aqua-gardening initiative.

With the success of our traditional gardens in our communities, as well as on-site at our Avondale location, we want to develop the ability to distribute fresh-picked produce all year-long with our Compassion Food Box ministry. Our goal is to create an aqua-garden model that not only sustains fresh fruit and vegetable production year-around, but can also be scaled, duplicated and serve as a teaching model for other organizations, community gardens, schools, and individuals.

Contact us for tours and volunteer opportunities in the fall: michael@csmission.org

City Garden Oasis Here at CSM

When you drive by our warehouse on 3rd Avenue South in Birmingham, you would never suspect that a secret garden is hidden behind. Experienced horticulturist and garden-newbies alike are amazed to see how our garden looks now. Even our staff is wide-eyed to see beds of soil-covered seeds magically transform— seemingly overnight— into a lush green and fruitful paradise. Our gardens not only provide fresh-picked vegetables and fruit, but also create an environment where volunteers, students and guests can experience the work and reward of farming in an urban setting. We like to think that our bees have brought the magic to this wonderland, but actually, a lot of hard work by our volunteers and interns under the direction of Farmer Michael Bowman has resulted in this garden oasis in the center of our city. Contact michael@csmission.org for a tour.