Urban Growers Collective co-founder to receive Honorary Degree

Erika Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, president of Green ERA Educational NFP, and co-owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners. PHOTO BY TONIKA JOHNSON.
Erika Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, president of Green ERA Educational NFP, and co-owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners. PHOTO BY TONIKA JOHNSON.

 Urban Growers Collective co-founder to receive Honorary Degree

By Tia Carol Jones

Erika Allen has been living her Master’s Degree Thesis and working in community operated food systems to create agency for 20 years.  Allen is the co-founder of Urban Growers Collective, president of Green ERA Educational NFP and co-owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners. On Saturday, Dec. 10th, Allen received an Honorary Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Allen’s thesis was about creating a program around alternative sentencing for teens, instead of incarceration. She saw a need to pivot into food, from art, which was her undergraduate major at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She grew up farming and could see an economic opportunity. She connected the dots, saw after 9/11 how food insecure Chicago was, and how people around her age didn’t know how to grow food. Allen wanted to alleviate poverty, structural racism, violence through wealth building.

Urban Growers Collective was founded in 2017, with a mission to develop community-based food systems and support communities to develop systems to grow, distribute and prepare food within those communities.

Urban Growers Collective has eight farms located in NewCity, Altgeld Gardens, South Chicago, Jackson Park, one at 60th and King Drive, Englewood, Bronzeville, and Grant Park. In addition to those farms, the Green Era Campus in Auburn Gresham will be the site of an anaerobic digester, urban farm, retail store and nursery, community education center and green space.

Allen believes that Black women have been historically exploited for their talent and ability to lead in agriculture and there is unaddressed pain and trauma, because of racism and terror.

“It was really hard for me to continue to hear young people talk about food and gardening as slave work and be more and more disconnected from the land and from the earth and to not know where food comes from, to not know we used to have vibrant food systems in our neighborhoods,” Allen said.

It has been personally rewarding for Allen to inspire her team and the 180-plus teens in the youth programs that Urban Growers Collective facilitates.

Last year, Fresh Moves Mobile Market, had 30,000 customers. It takes produce from the Urban Growers Collective Farms, and other nutritionally dense foods to 13 communities on the South and West sides.

“We offer vouchers, so there’s no financial barrier and people can shop, too. We’re making food a human right and utilizing the abundance of resources to support that,” Allen said, adding it is something she is very proud of.

“I love that I’m being recognized by Public Health, because poverty and all of its companions -- structural violence, structural racism, lack of resources -- all impact our Public Health, impact how long we live. Some of the things we’re doing is bringing joy and stability to our communities. We’re youth serving first and when our young people are cared for, that signals to the community that we have a future,” Allen said.

For more information about Urban Growers Collective, visit urbangrowerscollective.org. For more information about Green Era, visit www.greenerachicago.org.

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