Supporting FareStart is Part of JA's Social Responsibility

by Sarah Burk, AIA, JA Social Responsibility Committee Chair

In December of 2021, JA’s Social Responsibility committee began developing plans to partner with FareStart to provide support to their mission: to transform lives, disrupt poverty, and nourish communities through food, life skills, and job training. FareStart is a nonprofit organization based in Seattle that has been serving our community for nearly 30 years. They work closely with people experiencing struggles around poverty, helping them break unhealthy cycles, and overcoming barriers associated with finding and maintaining gainful employment. Through their efforts focus on food-based job training social enterprises, FareStart delivers more than 5,000 hot meals every day to social service programs and schools around the Puget Sound region. Our Social Responsibility committee agreed: partnering with FareStart just made sense. After all, their end goal is our end goal – helping our community and neighbors in need.

After meeting with them to get a grasp on their current needs, JA decided to contribute to FareStart’s pilot mobile community market program. This on-going effort is focused on providing equitable access to fresh, healthy food, as well as hygienic care kits, to underserved communities. The mobile community market leverages high quality food that is gathered, gleaned, donated, and purchased from food partners, including local farmers, grocery and retail stores, and private donors. Hygiene and care kits donated by volunteer groups provide additional resources to community market customers.

FareStart provides two types of care kits: bathing and cleaning. The bathing kits consist of shampoo, conditioner, and body soap, while the cleaning kits contain laundry detergent, all-purpose cleaner, and dish soap.

In January, JA’s Social Responsibility committee set a goal of raising $500 in donations, with the firm’s Partners committing to match that goal. To encourage community engagement, we established a month-long drive and turned to our JA team for support. Just two weeks into the drive, we surpassed our goal and decided to challenge ourselves by increasing it to $750 with JA leaders agreeing to match our new donation goal. At the end of our fundraising efforts, we had collected a total contribution of $1,700, which allowed us to purchase all the supplies to assemble 120 kits care kits for FareStart!

As a JUST organization, JA is committed to buying from local, small, and women or minority-owned businesses whenever possible, and to be mindful of our environmental footprint. Our team endeavored to purchase ecofriendly products whenever possible. Each kit included individually packaged items for hygienic purposes in a reusable tote bag. The team met in our studio after work one day to assemble kits and they were dropped off at the FareStart offices near the end of February.

While the community market program is still in its infancy, FareStart has supported our community for decades through multiple job training programs, providing meals to those in need, full-service restaurants, and a catering business. You can learn more about these programs, locate a café, or find ways to volunteer and support the organization on their website.