Growing Ancestral Roots (GAR) is a collective led by immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC communities in Benton and Linn counties. We are more than a food project—we are a living network where culture, livelihood, and survival come together.
For many of our members, Western systems often demand constant labor while dismissing the cultural traditions and values that sustain us. Pressuring people to conform and constantly explain to only minimize our traditions and culture. GAR exists as a refuge from that. GAR has created a place where people do not have to explain why their food, language, or customs matter. Here, individuals are free to live in their fullness, connect with one another, and find strength in shared experiences.
Our work is grounded in three roots:
Sacred Roots – Honoring ancestral knowledge and traditions.
Sustenance Roots – Growing and sharing culturally meaningful food that nourishes body and spirit.
Solidarity Economic Roots – Building cooperative models that create stability with enduring support and access to resources.
We exist to uplift Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in our rural community by advancing:
- Connection — through culturally rooted, community-based support
- Power — via leadership development and systems advocacy
Prosperity — by building access to resources, wealth, and wellness
We meet families where they are, adapting to their needs with flexibility and care.
Our work is grounded in lived experience, ancestral wisdom, and the belief that sustainable change must come from within communities, not from charity.
Through strategic partnerships and grassroots insight, we:
- Address systemic inequities in rural spaces
- Create resources where none exist
- Empower emerging leaders and holistic wellness
- Pursue lasting generational wealth and community transformation
We reject temporary fixes.
We are building sustainable systems that outlast us.
Partner with us and let's build something better together.
How We Work
We meet families where they are, adapting to their needs with flexibility and care. Our work is grounded in lived experience, ancestral wisdom, and the belief that sustainable change must come from within communities—never imposed from outside. Through strategic partnerships and grassroots organizing, we:
- Address systemic inequities in food systems, economic structures, and community spaces
- Create resources where none exist
- Pursue lasting generational wealth and community transformation
- Invest in leadership, healing, and cultural resilience
- Build collective power across diverse communities
- Challenge and shift oppressive systems that marginalize our people
Why This Work Matters
GAR exists because conventional systems have failed BIPOC, immigrant, and refugee communities—especially in regions like Corvallis where infrastructure for culturally specific food and support is nearly non-existent.
We don't just grow food. We grow:
- Belonging in places that told us we didn't fit
- Leadership among those denied power
- Access where there is none
- Cultural continuity across generations threatened by displacement
Who Leads
GAR is 100% BIPOC-led. Decision-making is collective, culturally grounded, and shaped by those with lived experience of displacement, food insecurity, and economic marginalization.
Our work centers multilingual, intergenerational, and land-based leadership, ensuring that our programs reflect real needs—not assumptions made about us, but knowledge that comes from us. We are the experts on our own lives. We are the builders of our own future.
Growing Ancestral Roots: Where culture is cultivated, community is strengthened, and futures are grown from the wisdom of the past.
