Koa Thornhill is no professional farmer but she’s looking forward to the next planting season.

Over the last decade, the program co-ordinator for Malvern Family Resource Centre has been working with neighbourhood residents to cultivate community gardens and address food insecurity in the area.

Now, the group will be able to expand their production and further their reach in the neighbourhood, thanks to a new funding stream from the United Way of Greater Toronto, part of an initiative that seeks to strengthen economic opportunities and the social well-being of residents in several communities across the region.

The Malvern centre is one of 12 grassroots agencies across Toronto that recently won various amounts of funding through the United Way’s Our Strong Neighbourhood Grants, a $2.3-million investment over two years to help bolster community projects that tackle issues such as food security, job creation and public realm improvement. BMO, one of the United Way’s annual donors, contributed more than $1 million to this endeavour.

Thornhill is a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council and has been overseeing her communities’ efforts to tackle food insecurity for years.

“You are dealing with folks who are precariously employed, precariously housed, they are facing a lot of challenges,” she said, noting people in Malvern have historically faced socio-economic pressure, leading many to flock to food banks in the area.

“Moms would go without eating so that their kids would be able to eat. Transit is really expensive for some folks so a lot of people would be walking really long distances to get to the grocery store, which is increasingly challenging when we have winter months.”

With previous funds from the United Way, Thornhill and her group were able to create a number of community gardens, including a large one in Neilson Park where members now grow various produce for themselves and even donate food to local meal programs, shelters and churches.

With about $200,000 in new funding over the next two years, Thornhill and her group want to expand their scope: through an initiative they call Malvern Takes Root, they want to develop a culinary arts bridging program to support young caterers, establish mobile markets for their produce and create a large urban farm.

“The hope is that we are able to set the foundation that allows these programs to be more robust so they can serve more community members,” she said.

Alex Dow, director of community connections at United Way, said the funding stream builds on previous community development and resident engagement work the United Way has done across the city. Over the past decade, he said, the United Way has financially supported more than 120 grassroots projects that improve economic opportunities, food access and the social well-being of residents all over the GTA.

Specifically in Malvern, Dow said such grants have allowed residents to come together to talk about issues that matter to them and develop local solutions. Residents themselves chose to zero in on food security as one of the key issues to tackle.

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Over the years, United Way has seen “firsthand” how the grants helped people reclaim spaces near their apartment buildings, and the area now boasts about a handful of gardens cared for by residents.

“Malvern is a great example where they did a lot of really amazing work on the ground,” said Dow, noting it all started with residents discussing what’s needed in their community.

“We think that there’s an opportunity to have some long-term sustainability around these types of partnerships.”