Faith Feeds founder John Walker works with some seedlings for his garden. Through Faith Feeds, the excess food he grows will go toward helping the hungry in Lexington. photo by: Robbie Clark.
Lexington, KY – On the last Monday night of each month, while most families are home eating dinner, John Walker, founder of the Faith Feeds program, is hosting a demonstration on how those families could have grown their dinner, or at least part of it, themselves. With the monthly Edible Garden series, Walker and other organizers educate others on how to grow food the right way. It’s a foreign concept to many people, but to Walker, it’s his passion.
Giving a succinct botany lesson, he eagerly writes on a chalkboard and uses different objects to illustrate the tools one must use in order to grow successful vegetables, fruits and herbs. The dozen attendees listen intently as Walker guides them through some of the major mistakes he’s seen in gardening.
Walker, a native of North Wales who immigrated to the United States in 1988, began researching how his favorite pastime could be used as a way to help others two years ago. He started the Faith Feeds program, a non-profit organization that has several different components, with Erica Horn. A member of Beaumont Presbyterian Church, Horn was already serving as the coordinator of the church’s community garden and partnered with Walker to get the non-profit off the ground.
The most prominent mission of Faith Feeds is to glean excess food from various community resources that would otherwise go to waste and use it as a means of feeding the hungry.
