Amanda Edmonds serves as Mayor of Ypsilanti while concurrently working as the Executive Director of Growing Hope, a grassroots urban agriculture and healthy food access organization.  Founded by Edmonds in 2003, this Ypsilanti-based nonprofit works to grow healthy people, healthy places, and healthy economies in order to improve equity and access across the food system.  Growing Hope began by helping youth and adults build gardens, but its vision expanded as Edmonds and her staff discovered that a whole-systems approach was necessary to facilitate meaningful and sustainable change.

The Growing Hope Center, located just a few blocks from downtown Ypsilanti, houses the organization’s garden and youth programs, offices, demonstration gardens, and 1.4 acre urban farm.  The Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace, Growing Hope’s anchor for farmers market and economic development programs, is in development in downtown Ypsilanti.  All around Ypsilanti and through policy and consulting work statewide, the tangible change the nonprofit has made is visible in revitalized places, gardens, and markets.  “We’re in the kind of work where there’s very physical, visible evidence of making things happen,” Edmonds comments.

Serving as Mayor of the City of Ypsilanti is an extension of Edmonds’s belief in sustainable communities.  While Growing Hope primarily supports the environment “leg” of the three-legged stool model of sustainability, her mayoral position allows Edmonds to focus her work more intently on the other aspects of sustainability: the equity and economy legs of the stool.  This systems approach is essential as Edmonds works to make Ypsilanti a place where everyone can thrive.   [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmjh3RuxdeI[/embed] Photo courtesy of Doug Coombe.