Cornell Cooperative Extension program expanding

An agricultural workforce development initiative aimed at young adults is expanding its program and providing experiences for its participants through newly acquired transportation. 

Gaining Relevant and Outstanding Work Skills, a program of Cornell Cooperative Extension Monroe County, targets young adults aged 18 to 24 facing barriers to employment, including single parenthood, past incarceration, and not having completed high school. 

Each GROWS participant has a “navigator” from a local nonprofit organization, such as the Center for Youth, Starbridge Services, or Community Place of Greater Rochester. These navigators guide young adults through different aspects of life, whether that’s pursuing housing or simply finding independence. 

Rachel DeVona works as the urban garden educator for GROWS.

“Learning urban farming skills is the main point (of the program), but in conjunction with those farming skills we learn a lot of other valuable work and career and life lessons along the way,” she says. “Even simple things like making a routine for yourself, ways to be a professional and show up to work, how to read a tape measure.

“There is a lot of disconnect from young adults in these environments with their food system,” she adds, “be it just identifying food, eating fresh food, how to shop for food, how to budget for food.”

DeVona believes GROWS is a pathway to get these young adults more closely connected to healthy, accessible food. 

“At the same time, they are being a part of our local food system and providing healthy, accessible food to neighborhoods that don’t have great food access or that are in food deserts, so we provide veggies to local food pantries, like People’s Pantry and Trillium Health’s Food and Nutrition Pantry,” she says. 

Acquisition of a van has allowed the GROWS program to expand. Last year, participants traveled in DeVona’s personal car, and only two people were involved in the program. This year, the program has expanded to six participants, who can fit in the van along with the produce delivered at peak freshness. Without the van, not everything fit, and they had to wait for food to be delivered. Avangrid Foundation helped GROWS acquire the van.

The new van has also allowed the program to go on more field trips. From early June to early August, the van logged 448 miles supporting GROWS programming, officials say. During the same period in 2025, program activities traveled only 87 miles using educators’ personal vehicles.

Field trips include visiting local urban farms and gardens to provide support. So far, participants have worked at community gardens at the International Plaza Community and Avenue D Recreation Center. They also visited Buffalo’s Massachusetts Avenue Project.

DeVona expects the van to contribute to even more growth.

“As I’m looking ahead into the year to come, I am hoping that I can have two seasons of GROWS programs,” she says. “If I can have a team of five, that would be April through the end of July, and then another team of five that would be August through October—that way, I’d be able to provide quality programming to, in total, a group of 10 for each growing season.” 

For those interested in learning more about GROWS or becoming a participant, DeVona can be reached here.

Alefiya Presswala is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort.

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