20 People to Watch - Katherine Kennedy

In May 2015, local farmer Katherine Kennedy was named Director of Concrete Jungle, becoming the charitable urban foraging organization’s first-ever employee. It’s a part-time gig, for now. But Kennedy’s appointment, and to a larger extent the participation and enthusiasm Concrete Jungle sustains, symbolizes the organization’s potential for continued growth.

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Founded by Craig Durkin and Aubrey Daniels in 2009, Concrete Jungle is entering its seventh year. In 2015, the organization donated 4,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to local homeless shelters and food banks, bringing the total amount of food donated — either foraged or grown specifically for donation at Concrete Jungle’s East Point farm — to more than 20,500 pounds. Also in the last year, Concrete Jungle added 800 new trees to its Atlanta area food map, for a grand total of 2,600, Kennedy says. And, in 2015, 715 volunteers contributed more than 1,400 hours of service to Concrete Jungle’s cause.

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“Katherine is making our growth possible,” Daniels says. “She’s doing a great job with our volunteers, collecting important data, fundraising, starting new programs, and helping coordinate with other organizations. All of 2016’s growth will be due to her.”

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Kennedy has worked in agriculture since 2010. She farmed at Glover Family Farms in Douglasville, Ga., and Jenny Jack Sun Farm in Pine Mountain, Ga., as well as Eagle Street Rooftop Farms and Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn, N.Y. Most recently, she served as Gardens Manager at the Lionheart School developing garden-based academic, therapeutic, and vocational programming for special needs students. Kennedy began volunteering for Concrete Jungle in 2012. As its Secretary of Agriculture she helped organize volunteer days and managed Concrete Jungle’s one-acre farm in East Point, which yields 2,000 pounds of vegetables each year.

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In her new role as director, Kennedy’s duties include scouting fruit trees, record keeping, communicating with volunteers, organizing partnerships, creating educational material, and fundraising. She’s also in charge of fine-tuning Concrete Jungle’s innovative Tree Parent program, an initiative devised to combat the group’s central struggle: getting to the fruit before it falls and goes to waste.

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The Tree Parent program, Kennedy explains, is designed to encourage civic engagement in local food and food access issues. Many Concrete Jungle volunteers, she says, don’t realize that there are often fruit trees right around the corner from where they live. Once Tree Parents adopt a tree near their home or workplace, they are asked to visit periodically as it ripens and to report back on the status of the tree with updates and current pictures so Concrete Jungle can evaluate whether or not it’s time to schedule a group pick.

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Thanks to an ongoing partnership with the Georgia Tech Digital Media department, there is even a Tree Parent app in the works. The app will allow volunteers to view a map of available trees in their area, adopt one, and help guide participants through the scouting and harvesting process.

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Other 2016 initiatives, Kennedy says, include picking more fruit than ever before; expanding the map to include areas outside the Perimeter; creating more educational programming and group volunteer opportunities for community, corporate, and school groups; planning day trips or weekend adventure picks that combine gleaning — cleaning up after harvest at orchards and larger farms by gathering leftovers and donating them — and a fun outdoor activity such as a hike.

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“It’s amazing that Concrete Jungle could exist for so long without an employee,” Kennedy says. “But it’s such a good concept and people want to do it. ... It’s easy to be like, ‘Hey guys, come climb a tree and take all this fruit to the food bank!’ I think it’s just something that people want to participate in, to not let food go to waste and get it to people who actually need it.”