Empowering youth: The mission of Turn Around Columbus (TAC), a Columbus, Georgia based non-profit, is to empower youth with hope, opportunities, and the tools to succeed. The South Columbus community where they work is one of the poorest in Columbus, where families have low access to healthy food and youth are in need of opportunities that contribute to their development, build pride, hope, and responsibility. It is a community of incredible untapped potential, that with care and investment can flourish.

The site: Since 2019, TAC has been mobilizing support and developing a vision for the Victory Garden & Farm to serve as a community resource center and an agriculture learning campus for the Muscogee County School District where youth learn how to grow food for their community and become entrepreneurs. On this 10-acre site along Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard they will run a Saturday garden program for elementary students, train high school aged garden leaders how to farm and run a small business, grow affordable and subsidized food for the East Columbus community, and host community events such as dinners, music performances, parenting classes and much more.

Designing a community asset: The design team helped to translate a highly conceptual grand vision of founder Ronzell Buckner for this site into a series of learning spaces as well as food production areas. Studying varying land-use strategies and providing a series of programming studies helped TAC build consensus around shared ideals and proposed uses for the 10 acre site. Two larger food production fields are connected through a centralized social gathering space including these connected public spaces to host community events. The Victory Garden & Farm is a way to reclaim this community, create a space of hope and purpose for youth, and to educate youth and their families on healthy living, practical life skills and productive community engagement.

Currently in a fundraising stage, the designs provided have given the community a way to see what is possible. A developed phasing strategy along with proposed budget and finalized graphic renderings has allowed for donor interaction and initial conversations with city officials to help realize this vision.