Social work student Christopher Brown and the organization he founded, Growing Veterans, has been recognized for bold and innovative outreach to veterans with The J.M.K. Innovation Prize, which announced individual grants of $175,000 to ten groups across the country on Nov. 12.
“We are incredibly honored to be recognized among the ranks of the J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize winners,” said Brown. “In addition to being excited to collaborate with such an impressive group, we will be able to put these funds to use immediately as we ramp up our peer-support programming in 2016.”
Watch this video of Christopher Brown talking about his vision for Growing Veterans.
Brown, a former Marine, served two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan before leaving the military in 2008. Since then, at least 15 men from his battalion have committed suicide. The unit’s unusually high suicide rate—almost four times the rate for young male veterans overall and 14 times that of Americans generally—was the focus on a New York Times story in September.
Brown started Growing Veterans—a nonprofit organization based in Lynden, Washington—in 2012 with two goals: to prevent suicide among vets and help them reintegrate into society, and to promote sustainable agriculture. The organization runs two farms in Skagit and Whatcom counties and sells its produce at the Seattle VA hospital’s weekly farmers market, and also donates produce to local food banks. Veterans work on the farms doing everything from planting seeds to harvesting produce. The organization is hosting its first peer-support training session in January, and Brown hopes to eventually use the 40-acre Skagit farm as a veteran retreat and training center.
“Growing Veterans is simultaneously filling two important needs by helping veterans reintegrate into their home communities and providing good and affordable food for the broader community,” said the J.M. Kaplan Fund’s Executive Director Amy Freitag. “It’s a solution with multiple impacts on lives and economies.”
The J.M.K. Innovation Prize is designed to seek out the most promising ideas in the field of social-sector innovation. Each award consists of up to three years of support at $50,000 per year, plus $25,000 for technical assistance or project expenses. The prize is sponsored by the New York-based J.M. Kaplan Fund, a family-supported philanthropy. This year the prize committee recognized ten outstanding organizations out of a pool of 1,138 applicants from 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.