Seattle Youth Garden Works shutters its doors

Seattle Youth Garden Works, a local charity that provided at-risk and homeless youth with garden-related jobs skills, has announced that it is ending operations due to budget shortfall:

Seattle Youth Garden Works (SYGW) would like to thank our community of exceptional friends, volunteers and donors for the support we received throughout 2009. Through your generosity, you affirmed that SYGW is doing important work in providing essential garden-based job training programs for Seattle’s homeless and at-risk youth.

However, despite our best efforts, SYGW has not raised adequate funds to sustain our program through the first few months of this year. Our fiscal sponsor, the Church Council of Greater Seattle (CCGS), affirmed their decision to have our program separate from CCGS as of December 31, 2009. We planned our independence from CCGS under a much different economic climate, when there was every reason to believe that we could sustain the program independently. Today, without enough adequate reserves or funding from a fiscal sponsor, we do not have the resources to sustain our operations. We believed that to continue operating under this uncertainty would not be in the best interest of the youth in our program, our staff or our donors.

Therefore, it is with great regret that the Advisory Board announces SYGW suspended our program on January 1, 2010, and will close our offices on January 25, 2010.

But there is still reason for hope! For the past year, the Advisory Board of SYGW has considered various options other than independence, including a merger with a program that has a similar mission and goals. SYGW is currently involved in discussions and we are hopeful that this will lead to a fruitful partnership.

If you’re interested in learning more about what they were doing and how they hope to transition their programs, visit their web site for more information.