Our projects

BGR projects are designed both to provide emergency food aid and to promote greater food productivity at the grass-roots level. We partner with organizations that are already operating on the ground in areas of interest. >

Afghanistan & Pakistan
Torghu Student
EDUCATION FOR GIRLS
Support the building of schools and promote education for children in remote rural villages >
Cambodia
Cambodian Daughter
AID FOR SEX WORKERS
Provide education and job training to help women escape sex trade in Phnom Penh red light district >
Cambodia
Cash crop in Cambodia
SEEDS AND TOOLS
Provide families in Pursat with start-up farming kits of cash crop seeds and garden tools >
South Africa
Khuphuka in South Africa
HUNGER RELIEF
Supply emergency food parcels to a rural community devastated by AIDS and poverty in KwaZulu-Natal >
United States
Garden Harvest
PRODUCE FOR THE POOR
Support local farms that grow fresh produce for emergency food agencies >
• Cambodia
CRITICAL RICE SUPPORT Provide critical monthly rice support to enable poor families to keep their daughters in school >
• Cambodia
COUNTER-TRAFFICKING Provide food packages to girls in training and counter-trafficking educators >
• Haiti
POST-QUAKE REHABILITATION Support long-term rehabilitation projects to improve nutrition and education in the wake of the 2010 disaster >
• Sri Lanka
LIVELIHOOD DEVELOPMENT Help poor families in a remote village develop their own livelihoods and send their children back to school >
• Vietnam
FOOD FOR HOSPITAL PATIENTS Provide thousands of meals to poverty-stricken patients at an overcrowded, understaffed rural hospital >
• Vietnam
RED CROSS SCHOLARSHIPS Help children of the poorest of the poor in Tam Binh District and Cam Duong Commune attend primary and secondary school >
 

BGR’s first United States project

Perennial gardens reap long-term food for the hungry

Pakastani schoolgirls
Enthusiastic young D.C. area volunteers plant blackberry bushes for the agency that they support.

As food prices in the United States continue to rise, there has been a corresponding fall in food donations to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other emergency food agencies that feed the hungry. A grant from BGR to Garden Harvest for it’s Adopt-a-Plot Program will help to feed thousands of hungry people in Maryland and Pennsylvania and to serve as a model that can be adapted by communities all around the country. Through its innovative Adopt-a-Plot Program in Maryland, Garden Harvest is giving local emergency food agencies a way to ensure a constant supply of high-quality food. The program is based at Garden Harvest’s farm 20 miles northwest of Baltimore. Participating agencies choose a plot of land and, with the help of their own volunteers, grow produce for the people they serve. They also agree to donate any surplus produce they harvest to smaller agencies. Land not used by participating agencies is worked by volunteers from schools, religious organizations, and social service groups, and the food they produce is donated to other emergency food agencies. Garden Harvest is a not-for-profit farm run by full-time volunteers assisted by seasonal staff and supported by more than 5,000 volunteers each season.

DHARMA OFFERING
AN INTEGRAL MODEL
OF BUDDHISM
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM
EATING THE BODY
OF THE WORLD
Michael I. Roehm
SIMPLE WAYS TO HELP
SOCIAL MEDIA, MATCHING GIFTS, SHARING
INFORMATION
A video lecture
We are what we eat …
 
 

Profile: Ms. O’s story

In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa,
half portions of porridge aren’t enough

Pakastani schoolgirls
Dr. Anne Brouha with other Khuphuka volunteers plant a garden for a family in Mqatsheni.

Report by Dr. Anne Brouha, MD – In early April, while visiting Dharmagiri Meditation Center and the village of Mqatsheni on a work retreat for the Khuphuka Project, I spent time with a woman in her 40’s, Ms. O., living with HIV/AIDS at her home in the village. Retreatants and community members working with the Khuphuka Project had dug a garden for her household and would soon plant seedlings. Ms. O. has been treated with anti-retroviral therapy for two years with an undetectable viral load, yet she has remained malnourished and underweight. In late March she became acutely ill with respiratory difficulties, and was found to have tuberculosis. She was started on anti-TB treatment at that time. Her respiratory symptoms are improving slightly but she continues to lose weight. It turns out that because she has no money to buy food, she was eating less than three half-portions of cornmeal porridge daily. Too ill to work or garden., she can barely… MORE >