Partner Spotlight: Ujima
Ujima is featured in our May newsletter, click here for more about our partners’ incredible work this past month, and for more ways to engage with Ujima’s mission, vision, and work.
Ujima is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa meaning “collective work and responsibility” which is exactly what Ujima stands for. Ujima has been thriving since 2018 and strives to build and maintain a healthy community through collective problem-solving, food justice, youth empowerment, and environmental stewardship.
Missouri has approximately 850,000 residents struggling with food insecurity. 1 in 6 of them are children. St. Louis in particular has unused and toxic land throughout the area that Ujima is restoring into an urban farm. Further, they have addressed these issues by donating the produce they grow to families who are struggling with food security. In 2021 the organization launched the Apprenticeship Program, now called The Sunflower Institute. What started as a summer job program for Black teenagers and young adults evolved into a holistic community that provides year-round support. While food and environmental justice are emphasized, we also look to support their mental wellness, explore nature via camping trips and field trips, connect them with employment/professional development opportunities, provide food access, transportation and connect them with housing if needed.
The heart of their work happens at George Washington Carver Farms (GWC), an urban farm inspired by the ancestors’ legendary work. GWC is located in St. Louis’ 11th Ward, which is made up of north city neighborhoods burdened with food apartheid and environmental racism. This has created an ecosystem filled with violence, poverty, crime, and effects on the community’s mental and physical health, which poses a sense of urgency around Ujima’s mission. This urban farm is crucial to the advancement of the community’s health and well-being as it restores abandoned and unsafe land into a beautiful green landscape that creates space for fresh food, native plants, outdoor education, jobs, healing, and justice.
With the community Ujima has created over the years, they were able to assist St. Louis with a cleanup and restoration following the devastating EF-3 tornado in May of 2025. This tornado impacted predominantly black and historically disinvested neighborhoods, with high levels of debris that still impact the community a year later. Thousands of FEMA requests were submitted but denied. Ujima responded by mobilizing 40 volunteers to break down fallen trees, clean up debris, remove tree branches off of cars, put up tarps on roofs and clear streets in the neighborhood, donated masks, cleaning supplies, flash lights, batteries, and sweet potatoes to “The People’s Response” (a local grassroots effort led by Action St. Louis and For The Culture STL to support North city citizens that were displaced and/or negatively impacted by the tornado). They also donated money directly to impacted citizens as well as purchased bed sheets, blankets and shoes.
It takes courage, resilience, and strength to continue this work in the face of a political climate that does not value it. Their impact ranges from giving teens a sense of optimism for their future, growing over 12,000 pounds of food, herbs and flowers since 2020, and cleaning up over 14,000 lbs of trash. Overall, Ujima is a testament to community-driven work that can make a positive impact on places people call home.
