WASHINGTON — Ward 7 and 8 entrepreneurs have the chance to turn their dreams into a business thanks to a relatively new grant program. Calvin "JR" Hines is doing just that.
For about the last three years, D.C. has been holding a Dream Pitch Program, which develops a cohort of entrepreneurs to learn from each other and experts throughout the city as they work to build their businesses.
It culminates in a pitch competition, where grant money is awarded.
Hines came away the winner last year.
He's funneling the prize money into a mobile farm. It sits right on his front lawn.
“The vision that we see for the future is that Ward 7 and 8 will actually be the urban agricultural center for D.C.," Hines said. "And we want to have full engagement with our neighbors. So the mobility helps us to go into lawns.”
It looks like a little shed with two doors, which Hines is outfitting with generators, solar panels, and proper insulation/ventilation to grow the crop of choice: mushrooms.
"The barrier to entry was easier, and we can control the climate. And they've been proven to be profitable," he said. "So as you can see, in our proof of concept behind this, everything is climate controlled from humidity to temperature to lighting, and less of a chance of, of mishap."
The first step in achieving Hines' dream of an urban agricultural center was starting EightFold Farms DC in 2017.
"Go back to 2017 when I was frustrated with a four mile trip to go get groceries. And I started looking at international initiatives that I could model that I could use to stimulate the local economy also increase food access, but at the same time, it was profitable. And that's when our Eco farms was born," he said.
DC's grant is helping to Hines to achieve the next step with his mobile farm.
“So we don't have folks just participating and we leave them there, we come, we see how the funds are working, we find out what other needs are there and try to continue to support them all the way through," Acting Director of the Department of Small and Local Business Development, Rosemary Suggs-Evans said.
So far with the program, a spokesperson for her department said they've awarded entrepreneurs $1.5 million in Dream grants.
Now that Hines almost has the mobile farm up and running, he's planting the seeds for a partnership with nearby group Fihankra Akoma Ntoaso (FAN).
"FAN is a youth-focused, peer operated center, and that means that we run programs for kids that maybe are impacted by the child welfare system," Executive Director, Josephine Mazyck said. "Our team has lived experience, so we all ourselves have either been involved in the system in some way or suffered from some kind of traumatic experience in life that we’re not opposed to sharing, or have lived with family members outside of our biological birth parents.”
Hines and Mazyck are working on an educational program to nurture the next generation of growers, called From Farm to Table.
“We teach children mushroom cultivation and also financial literacy," Hines said, "And we're really cultivating the the newer urban AG folks [that] are going to come up and really pass on the torch to the next generations.”
He said they'll start with five to eight kids in fifth grade and work with them until graduation.
“I think long term it will change the landscape of the ward 8 community," Mazyck said. "Not only will it provide different facets of food and tackle that food insecurity challenge that we deal with here, but it will provide jobs and employment and bring back an economic vitality.”
One potential participant is Jayla Johnson, who's a ninth grader involved in FAN.
“I would say that’s something that would be good and entertaining to learn, because it’s always good to learn something new and have something new in your books that you can experience and share with other people," Johnson said.
That sharing -- in the classroom and the farm -- is what Hines hopes to harvest.
“I always say we, we grow food to cultivate communities," he said.
His goal is to open the mobile farm in April.
He said he plans to kick off the From Farm to Table partnership program on February 19.
Applications for the Dream Pitch Program are open now through March 1.
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