What is SEEED

At SEEED, we know that our communities are the communities that get the last of everything. Knowing this, we want to have a hand in making them first.

Over 13 years ago, the founders of SEEED made the commitment to make their community a first class neighborhood. Stan Johnson, Josh Outsey, Jarius Bush, and Jerome Johnson started SEEED with one major priority idea: To deliver the best service to the communities that usually get the worst. We wanted excellence and quality to become the standard to a community that often had to settle for much less.

Stan Johnson - Executive Director and Co-Founder

The first thing they did was to find out from residents what issues, concerns, and problems they wanted to be addressed. To do this, the founders went door-to-door canvassing and doing surveys about what was on their minds. This was SEEED’s first listening project. Out of this Listening Project, they found out that high utility bills, lack of affordable housing, and lack of youth opportunities were some of the major issues.

Fast forward to the present, we are delivering the voice of the community through our grant awarding community engagement enterprise. We pride ourselves by bringing their voices to government and non-government agencies to provide critical data that’s used to bring badly needed resources to their community. We also have become that trusted vessel to deliver vital information and services from these agencies to vulnerable communities.

But, we wanted and demanded ourselves to do more. Our mission is to provide pathways out of poverty for young adults. The mission encouraged us to develop our Career Readiness Program, three different bootcamps, and the green construction of the Mustard SEEED House. We want to transfer our communities from the inside out using local young adults to pull themselves towards a meaningful career in a livable wage job.

Next, we assist local low income families break the generational curse of poverty by changing their trajectory and mind set toward generational wealth through home ownership. Lastly, we provide the local residents with an edible forest. It is a food oasis in the middle of a food desert, which becomes a viable option against the poor dietary choices. We are providing wrap-around resources that bring world class service to our community. Therefore, transforming the last to become first.

Solar House construction