From a backyard garden to classrooms in Glendale, Proyecto Xilonen (pronounced “shee-LOW-nen”) is growing more than food. They’re growing knowledge, resilience, and cultural pride. Thank you, Proyecto Xilonen, for showing Salt Lake City the power of honoring our roots to nourish our future. Read on to learn more about this community leader and a 2025 recipient of our Community Food Microgrant Program.
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The New American Goat Club was a 2023, 2024, and 2025 community organization recipient. Photo credit: Ashley Detrick
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June 26, 2025
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Salt Lake City continues to increase residents’ access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food by funding 12 community food projects through the Sustainability Department’s 2025 SLC Food Microgrant program.
This year, over $56,500 in funding was granted to community-led projects aligned with recommendations from the City’s Resident Food Equity Advisors Program.
“We often talk about building a more resilient Salt Lake City, and this is one way we’re doing it—by supporting neighbors and community groups who grow food, share knowledge, and improve access to locally sourced, culturally meaningful foods,” said Mayor Mendenhall. “These microgrants are small investments with big returns for our health, our environment, and our connection to one another.”
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Kate Kuwahara
Photo credit: Downtown SLC Farmers Market
The holiday season is upon us! This can be a time to gather with loved ones and enjoy some great food, often bringing recipes we only enjoy once or twice a year. Holidays can also be a great place to start when rethinking long-held traditions, habits, and how our actions can impact our community. Food waste is a major issue in the U.S. even outside of the holiday season. About 40% of all food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten, and this amount increases by an additional 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year’s!
However you celebrate, we encourage sustainable habits around gathering for the holidays, from food waste to decorations. And what better place to start than buying local food! Salt Lake City’s Winter Farmers’ Market returns on Saturdays beginning November 9th and will operate weekly from 10AM to 2PM through April 19th (closed November 30th and March 15th). SLCgreen’s summer intern Kate Kuwahara visited the Downtown Summer Farmers’ Market for the first time and shares her new perspective on farmer’s markets and learning more about our food systems.
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Frances Benfell
According to Jeanette Padilla Vega, the founder and CEO of the Food Justice Coalition (FJC), humanity’s greatest unifier is food. As she put it, her organization is “trying to change the world one rice bowl at a time.” As I observed her community cooking class and the aromas of her vegan chicken curry filled the air, I believed in her food’s world-changing power.
The FJC was one of 13 community organizations awarded a Salt Lake City Food Equity Microgrant this year.
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Kellen Hunnicutt
There is a difference between what is safe to eat and what can be sold at a grocery store. Best-by and sell-by dates are not designed to be safety dates; rather they’re reference points indicating when foods may have the best flavor or quality. Similarly, bruised or oddly shaped foods may be rejected by grocery stores, even though they’re still nutritious and safe to eat.
Food Not Bombs is a global organization committed to food recovery, equity and mutual aid. The Salt Lake City chapter has been operating continuously since 1999. The group has built relationships with local food providers such as Natural Grocers, Good Earth Markets, and City Cakes Bakery. Each week, volunteers pick up food from these locations that is edible but unsellable to redistribute to the community.
Continue readingby SLCgreen Intern Charles Bonkowsky
In the summer, the Salt Lake Valley is ripe with fruit. Through farmers’ markets or programs like the Green Urban Lunch Box, people all over the valley are able to enjoy it. But come winter, that fresh supply dries up.
Katie Lawson’s Salt Lake Canning Co. is working to fill that gap: in 2021 and 2022, the organization canned hundreds of jars of local fruit for distribution to senior citizens, and with the money received from Salt Lake City’s Food Equity Microgrant program, she hopes to do even more this year.
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Emma Johnson
In mid-July, Wasatch Community Gardens is filled to the brim with lush green vegetable plants, vibrant swaths of flowers, and stooping trees laden with fruit. It is mostly organized into neat sections and rows, but a verdant patch on the southeast edge, boasting many different textures and massive sunflowers reaching to the sky, is more freeform.
This is the Growing Traditions section of the garden, designed for the Sabores de Mi Patria program with Artes de Mexico en Utah to represent traditional agricultural practices from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Sabores de Mi Patria translates to “flavors of my homeland.”
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Iris Tang
Vanavil Community Garden, one of the 2023 food equity microgrant winners, is located in the Ballpark area and is run by Priya Chidambaram. Priya started the Vanavil Community Garden as a renter; with her landlord’s approval, she transformed the yard into a garden and built a community around it. Since then, Priya has purchased her own house in the Ballpark area and relocated the gardens there.
Priya named the garden ‘Vanavil’ as it means ‘rainbow’ in her native language, Tamil. The name initially came from the desire to grow colorful and diverse crops such as yellow tomatoes and purple carrots. However, Priya notes the name has grown to represent inclusivity as well.
Continue readingBy SLCgreen Intern Emma Johnson and Staff Jude Westwood
On Salt Lake City’s West Side, near the old water park, lives a sizable herd of goats. The same piece of land also houses sheep, chickens, beehives, and many garden plots filled with a variety of plants.
Although the Farm is managed by Roots, Utah’s first farm-based charter school, fifteen of the goats on the property are owned by the “The New American Goat Club.” The Goat Club is a summer educational program for refugee and immigrant youth interested in learning about goat husbandry. It’s also one of SLCgreen’s 2023 Food Equity Microgrant awardees.
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Today Mayor Mendenhall and the Salt Lake City Sustainability Department announced the list of groups that have been awarded funding through the SLC Food Equity Microgrant pilot program, which launched earlier this year.
The new grant program provided $35,000 in total funding to increase residents’ access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food by supporting community-led projects aligned with the recommendations from the City’s Resident Food Equity Advisors’ 2021 Report. Projects led by and serving those who identify as members of groups that have been most negatively impacted by the food system were prioritized for funding, and accessibility and equity were central to the program’s design and goals.
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