Prosperity Gardens full of produce and C-U at Home crew members

CHAMPAIGN, III (WAND) - Gathering valuable work experience... and fresh produce for the community.

CU at Home and and Prosperity Gardens are working together for CU at Work, a partnership to put those experiencing homelessness to work. Nicole Musumeci, the Program Director says they were shocked at the amount of employees they had this season. "Even in a year of COVID, we were able to employ over 25 individuals on the farm and grow over 1,000 pounds of produce that was donated directly to the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen."

The program brings workforce skills to those willing to get their hands dirty, while also feeding their community. Some of this season's workers feel like the gardens are their calling, like Alexander Island. He tells WAND News, "Helping the people out ands stuff doing a little, you know, it was about volunteer work and stuff, then you know you help a lot of people. I like doing that."

He jokes about wanting to fix as many food bags possible with the produce he's been caring for the last couple weeks. Island says nothing beats feeding the community and seeing smiles on people's faces.

"Fixing food bags and for people and giving it to them and seeing them leave with a smile and stuff like that so that helps me right there that's good for me...I try to be generous, hey you want more, you want more of this? You want that? I can be nice."

The Program Director says the partnership goes deeper than just employing those experiencing homeless, its pushing them forward in their lives. "I get to develop relationships with each one of the employees that we have out here and so it's a very, it's a very personal take on the program and so being able to understand where people are coming from, is really important."

The produce this year is one of the best yet, Musumeci says. "We're participating in the Champaign-Farmers market so last week we were able to take things like wax beans, asian eggplant, cabbages and we spotted our first red tomato, so it's really exciting to see the bounty of what we're able to grow here.

Growing food and prosperity in the gardens is their mission. One of the men who is working for the program started the job with no home, and now, he owns a place of his own.

A new garden is set to come to Beardsley Park, which will be open to grow produce year round.