For people living below the poverty level, it may be difficult to afford produce necessary for a healthy diet, which is why Dan Kenney started the DeKalb County Community Gardens in 2012.

Kenney is a teacher at Brooks Elementary School, 3225 Sangamon Drive.

“In this county, one in five children are undernourished,” said Michele Roberts, who coordinated the Genoa community gardens. “We’re trying to meet that need, fill that gap and provide an experience of community for people who want to get together and grow produce. The organization was formed to provide nutritious, healthy, fresh produce for people who weren’t familiar with gardening or didn’t have access to fresh produce.”

Kenney, executive director of the DeKalb County Community Gardens organization, planted his first garden at Clinton Rosette Middle School, 650 N. First St., while he was working with in-school suspension students. When he began teaching at Brooks, he planted a garden there, sparking the interest of all elementary schools in DeKalb. Kenney said he hopes the gardens help end hunger.

“We took vegetables to the food pantries,” Kenney said. “Then the economy changed and there were more people using food pantries. I saw how important it was for them to be able to have fresh produce, and that’s not something you can usually get at a food pantry. We decided to expand the school gardens to all the elementary schools in DeKalb, so I thought it would be a good time to start a community garden project, and I did last year.”

Kenney said the gardens provide significant nutritional benefits to food pantries.

“It helps with the obesity issue,” Kenney said. “When individuals use food pantries they usually get high-calorie foods but very low-nutritional foods.”

Kenney said the gardens also provide a benefit to the community.

“Our motto is building a community one garden at a time,” Kenney said. “It helps the local economy, and it makes neighborhoods safer because people know each other.”

The organization reaches out to various aspects of a community, from the people who grow the food to the people who utilize food pantries. Kenney said a sense of community is required to maintain a healthy garden.

“In some gardens, you can grow things with a community,” Kenney said. “They can share and take the produce they need for themselves. Anything that isn’t used by the people who help grow the food is donated to food pantries. Last year, we donated over one-and-a-half tons of food to the food pantries of DeKalb and Sycamore.”

Kenney said the organization served 16 food pantries last year. It is expanding onto 10 more acres of land, and participants hopes to have several tons of food growing to serve more than 30 food pantries. Since the organization began, more than 37 gardens have been planted in DeKalb County.

There is a community garden at every elementary school in DeKalb, and Anne Almburg, reading specialist at Founders Elementary School, 821 S. Seventh St., was the one who initiated the garden being put in at her school. Almburg said each grade level can choose what it wants to plant, and children tend their gardens as a classroom community during the school year.

“It makes the source of the food real to them,” Almburg said. “I think they are enjoying the idea of watching the process from sprout to actually harvesting the product.”

Roberts, who is a physician assistant at the Kishwaukee Center for Family Health, hopes to put a garden at every school in Sycamore and is doing her part elsewhere to expand the gardens. Recently, Roberts and volunteers put in 20 garden beds at the site of the Kishwaukee Center for Family Health at Plank and Peace Road in Sycamore.

“We’re going to be getting our patients involved in growing produce,” Roberts said. “We are really excited to get the patients involved. You see so many diseases that are obesity-related, like diabetes and hypertension. We’re excited to work with the patients and give them a tool to teach good nutrition.”

There is another community garden in Cortland, which town administrator Walter Magdziarz said has many benefits.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Magdziarz said. “There’s a lot of people in the community who for whatever reason can’t do gardening on their property, and this is a way to do that. There is also a social benefit– people get to talk to their neighbors or other people they normally wouldn’t come in contact with.”