Ballard Center, nonprofit team up to expand free fresh produce access
Fresh produce will reach Ballard Center’s pantry three days a week during the growing season, giving North Lawrence families a steadier source of free food.
Families who already depend on the Ballard Center for pantry help in North Lawrence were set to get a more reliable source of fresh food: student-grown produce from Growing Food Growing Health will be available three days a week inside the new Ballard Pantry Annex during the growing season.
The Ballard Center at 708 Elm St. has long operated as a low-barrier emergency pantry, offering free clothes, food and other household necessities. Earlier reporting said the pantry served about 70 people per week and that 7,297 household members were touched by pantry services last year, a reminder of how many Lawrence families are stretching grocery dollars to cover rent, medicine and transportation at the same time.
That makes the new partnership matter beyond the announcement itself. Ballard is planning a standalone pantry building addition with an ADA-accessible food and clothing pantry and dedicated volunteer space, and it recently received a $75,000 grant from the Kriz Family Foundation to help modernize its century-old building and move toward required safety upgrades. The produce collaboration fits that broader effort to make the site easier to use and more capable of serving households with children, older adults and neighbors with limited transportation.
Growing Food Growing Health brings a different kind of local capacity to the table. The Lawrence-based nonprofit says it has harvested more than 30,000 pounds of sustainably grown produce since 2010, and it has built that work around youth gardeners, school gardens and neighborhood food distribution. Its West Middle School garden is in its 14th growing season in 2024, and its programs have also included a weekly Free Market at Edgewood Homes since 2020. The organization recently began sending all produce from its West garden to Just Food, the food bank for Lawrence and Douglas County, several times a week as well.
Ballard COO Will Averill said the goal is to make fresh food access welcoming, dignified and community-centered. For North Lawrence households watching every dollar, that means more than a box of vegetables. It means produce showing up on a predictable schedule, in the same place where families already come for other necessities, at a time when Douglas County food insecurity remains high.
Feeding America estimates that 16,680 people in Douglas County were food insecure in 2023, a rate of 14.0%, with an annual food budget shortfall of $12.495 million. County health data say food insecurity can force families to choose between eating well and paying for healthcare, medicine, housing and transportation, which is exactly why local food partnerships increasingly link gardens, pantries and service agencies instead of asking residents to navigate each system alone.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
