Calling All Belk Shoppers! Save BIG November 13-15 & Help Katie’s Krops Grow!
It is Belk Charity Sale time! Buy a $5 ticket and get $10 off while saving up 40% on designer brands and up to 65% off Belk exclusives. The BEST part…100% of your $5 ticket sale goes back to Katie’s Krops.
To purchase tickets to support Katie’s Krops please follow the link below.
Please share with all of your friends and family who love Belk and help us raise the funds we desperately need to keep growing. Coupon holders can use the coupon at any participating Belk location.
Join us for the 10th Anniversary of the Katie’s Krops Dinner!
On Thursday, October 29th, we will celebrate ten amazing years of Katie’s Krops Dinners! Join us for a drive-thru dinner celebration at Summerville Baptist Church located at 417 Central Avenue in Summerville, South Carolina.
Guests will be treated to a four-course to go dinner, 92.5 Kickin Country will be joining us, and we will have a number of wonderful giveaways that our guests can win. It will be a fun dinner to celebrate a decade of free Katie’s Krops Dinners.
We will start serving at 4:30 pm and will finish when all meals have been distributed. We anticipate a large crowd, so we recommend arriving early. We ask that you following the directions of our parking lot volunteers for everyone’s safety.
We want to thank Kia Country of Charleston for sponsoring our anniversary dinner and I Heart Hungry Kids for providing a grant to make this dinner extra special.
Calling All Belk Shoppers! It is Belk Charity Sale Time.
It is Belk Charity Sale time! Buy a $5 ticket and get $10 off while saving up 40% on designer brands and up to 65% off Belk exclusives. The BEST part…100% of your $5 ticket sale goes back to Katie’s Krops.
To purchase tickets to support Katie’s Krops please follow the link below. Make sure you select Katie’s Krops as your charity. We will show up under the Summerville, SC store. Please share this post and help us raise the funds we desperately need to keep growing. For sale dates please see the image on this post. Coupon holders can use the coupon at any participating Belk location.
I was in the sixth grade when it all began. My mom and I pulled up to The Palmetto House, our town’s only homeless shelter and full-time soup kitchen. We had made countless visits to the shelter to deliver produce from our gardens to support their efforts. This time a small group greeted us with somber faces gathered around a locked front door with a handwritten sign on the front door informing visitors that The Palmetto House was closed permanently. My heart sank.
It was at that moment that I knew I had to find a solution, a way to provide healthy free meals to individuals struggling with food insecurity in my hometown. We started the Katie’s Krops Garden-to-Table Dinner, a youth-based initiative to have children grow fruits and vegetables and use the harvest to create healthy meals to share with the community.
The Katie’s Krops Dinners quickly became one of my favorite parts of the work I was doing. The guests became my second family. We shared joy and heartache. Births and, sadly, deaths as well. We rejoiced in graduations and new jobs. It has been an incredible ten years, and I am so incredibly proud of what we have created.
On Thursday, October 29th, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Katie’s Krops Dinner. This will be a celebration, unlike any before. With COVID still ever-present in our lives, we will host a ‘Drive-Thru Celebration.’ We are working to make this event extra unique and would love your support.
We are seeking the following sponsors:
~ A Beverage Sponsor- $450 or beverages for 650 guests
~A Soup Sponsor- $300 for us to make and share 150 to 200 containers of delicious garden fresh soup.
~A Dessert Sponsor- $300
~A Gift Bag Sponsor- $400 to support a giveaway for each family
If you would like to support our efforts please contact Katie@KatiesKrops.com. Here is to another ten amazing years!
On Saturday, August 23rd, we broke ground on an exciting new project, an outdoor classroom in our new flagship garden. This project is being made possible by our friends and supporters at Penske South Carolina. The expansive outdoor space will allow us to host educational programs in challenging times. In October, we will start to offer a variety of programs such as Story Time in the Garden with Katie, gardening classes, science programs, and much more. Stay tuned for exciting updates.
Share Your Input on Programing for Our NEW Outdoor Classroom
We are very excited to announce that we will be building an outdoor classroom in our new flagship Katie’s Krops garden. We know many families will be opting for virtual school and homeschooling for the 2020/2021 school year. We are excited to offer programming to support families in these challenging times. We would love your input as we start designing our outdoor classroom and develop programming. Please know that with everything we do, safety, and social distancing will be a priority. If you live in the Summerville, South Carolina area we greatly appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to complete our survey. We are so excited to launch this new initiative!
If you would like to support our outdoor classroom, we would welcome your support.
DAILY POINT OF LIGHT # 6780 | MAY 20, 2020 | BY POINTS OF LIGHT
The average grocery store cabbage weighs a couple of pounds. So when Katie Stagliano grew a 40-pound cabbage in her home garden as a 3rd grader, she knew she had to share the bountiful crop. 275 people fed later at a local soup kitchen, the now 21-year-old Summerville, South Carolina resident says she realized the power of her harvest.
“I brought home this cabbage seedling as part of a school project, and planted it in our backyard, watering and weeding around it every day. Once it grew into a 40-pound cabbage, we knew it was far too big for just my family. It really opened my eyes to hunger. If one cabbage can feed 275 people, imagine how many people an entire garden could feed. That was the inspiration for my volunteerism. I wanted to help feed people in need.”
Launching Katie’s Krops in 2008 with the idea that “it only takes a seedling”, Katie, who serves as founder and chief executive gardener, has inspired hundreds of other gardeners, growing to include vegetable gardens of all sizes in 30 states across the country. Katie’s Krops “Growers”, aged 9-16 from California to Washington to Texas, run gardens in their backyards, school yards, and anywhere they can get permission to grow produce, their healthy harvests donated to help food insecure individuals and families. In total, Katie says 250,000-pounds of produce have been donated since 2008, not just feeding hungry mouths, but also changing the future for thousands of people in the U.S., says Katie’s Krops Grower Ian McKenna, a 15-year-old volunteer from Austin, Texas.
“Katie’s Krops has helped many, many, many people. I’ve grown thousands of pounds of produce to donate to people who are struggling with food insecurity. The food I am bringing them helps in more ways than just feeding them. If a kid receives our food, it helps them with school because I know if I’m at school and I haven’t eaten for awhile, I have trouble focusing. That, by extension, is helping their future.”
AS A THIRD-GRADER, KATIE STAGLIANO GREW A 40-POUND CABBAGE IN HER HOME GARDEN, HER DREAM OF GROWING A HEALTHY END TO HUNGER, ONE VEGETABLE GARDEN AT A TIME, STARTING WITH JUST ONE SEEDLING. /COURTESY KATIE STAGLIANOFeeding some of the more than one in ten U.S. households that experienced food insecurity in 2018 with fresh vegetables including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans, eggplant, okra and more, Katie says that her dream of growing a healthy end to hunger, one vegetable garden at a time, is slowly becoming a reality.
“When I first began this service, I wasn’t really aware of the issue of hunger, food insecurity and how it affects families. People who have lost their jobs are dealing with medical bills and are worried about putting food on the table. (Katie’s Krops) has opened up my eyes to not only the problems the world is facing but also the amazing people who are passionate about making a difference and the changes we are able to make.”
Those changes are far reaching and yet personal for Katie, who is able to interact with recipients of her fresh vegetables.
KATIE’S KROPS IS CONTINUING TO SERVE HUNGRY FAMILIES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, DISTRIBUTING 2,000 HEALTHY MEALS THUS FAR THROUGH WEEKLY DRIVE-UPS./COURTESY KATIE STAGLIANO
“I met a little girl at an event we hosted at a vacation bible school. The little girl raised her hand and said she didn’t have any questions for me, she just wanted to tell me that I was awesome. She walked up to me with a sticker that said “love” on it, and she gave me a hug and put the sticker on my heart. After all the kids left the room one of the counselors explained to me that the vegetables I’d brought for the event to help feed a homeless family were given to that little girl’s family. The family had been struggling to put food on the table. It’s heartbreaking to see that families just like mine have fallen on hard times and I know the solution starts with just one seedling to start helping these people.”
And now, as she continues her work to end hunger, Katie is adjusting her organization’s offerings to make sure hungry families can still receive food amidst the coronavirus pandemic, swapping what used to be a monthly garden to table dinner for weekly drive-up dinners for her community.
“Since in-person dinners are no longer possible, we are now doing weekly drive-up dinners every Thursday. For the past two months, we’ve been creating the meals and boxing them up for distribution to families in South Carolina. There are so many individuals out of work and out of school and struggling, so we want to be there for them. We’ve been trying to do fun and different meals while also keeping everyone’s meals healthy to keep everyone’s immune systems up. We’ve served two-thousand meals thus far and we will continue doing this for as long as it’s necessary.”
#GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people to transform their communities. We have been truly blessed to have your support in order for us to ramp up our efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. We would be honored to have your support today, Tuesday, May 5th to continue to grow. We are blessed to have a matching donor, which means $5 becomes $10, $20 dollars becomes $40! There are a number of ways to give:
Venmo- KatiesKrops
PayPal- katie@katieskrops.com
Snail mail a donations to: Katie’s Krops, PO Box 1841, Summerville, SC. 29484
Congratulations to our winners Hilary & Brandon! We hope to offer more contests in the future.
Contest Time!
Expand Your Garden Library
Looking for fun and inspirational reading in these challenging times? Enter to win a signed copy of Katie’s award-winning children’s book ‘Katie’s Cabbage’ and a copy of Joanna Gaines ‘We Are The Gardeners’. Two people will win copies of both books to expand their garden library. To enter simply complete the entry form below. All entries must be received by midnight on May 2nd. Good luck & stay safe!
Katie’s Krops: Feeding the Lowcountry 1 garden at a time
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCBD)- A local organization called “Katie’s Krops” has been feeding the Lowcountry for over a decade. With COVID-19 impacting the community, they’ve decided to increase their monthly meal distribution to a weekly basis.
Katie Stagliano’s story is known all over the world. In 2008, 9-year-old Stagliano planted a tiny seedling that grew into a cabbage. This cabbage happened to weigh 40 pounds and fed over 275 people at a local soup kitchen.
“So after I donated my cabbage and I saw how many people it fed, I decided that I wanted to start a garden,” says Stagliano.
Her green thumb soon developed into a passion. She started donating her fresh fruits and veggies to the soup kitchen.
“Our local soup kitchen in our area had to shut their doors due to funding,” she says. “I was really worried about all the people who had been relying on the soup kitchen for food.”
She soon came up with a plan to put her garden to good use. With the help of her friends, a chef, and Summerville Baptist Church, her vision came to life.
“That was the birth of the “Katie’s Krops” dinners. I thought, I have all of these gardens, and they’re filled with vegetables,” says Stagliano.
Once a month, they cook a big sit-down meal and gather at the church. Every plate is made with fresh produce from the multitude of gardens they’ve planted in the Lowcountry.
“We harvested 14 and a half pounds this morning. All fresh from the garden,” says Stagliano’s friend Peyton Kelley, referring to the kale in tonight’s dinner.
Katie’s Krops dinners turned into a 2nd family for Stagliano. She says that these individuals have been able to watch her grow through multiple stages of her life.
With COVID-19 eliminating the possibility for large gatherings, they have started passing out to-go dinners via curbside pickup.
“I’ve actually really enjoyed passing out the meals, through the cars because it gives me a chance to talk to each and every guest that comes through, and it’s been so great during a tough time to see so many familiar faces and interact with some of my favorite people so it’s been really amazing,” says Stagliano.
She has plans to graduate from the College of Charleston this year and take on Katie’s Krops as a full time operation. For more information on hot meal pick-up, click here.
