Our Vision and Mission
Our name, "common ground," refers to food. Everybody likes to eat, and we all must eat to survive. What we eat and how we prepare it determines how healthy we are. By cooking and eating together, we grow community. Our food traditions define us and form the basis of our culture. Growing our own food transforms us: turns us into producers increasing our self-reliance, and connects us to the Earth.
We are an all-volunteer nonprofit based in Kinston, Lenoir County, North Carolina, with a mission of enhancing the quality of life in eastern North Carolina through outdoor programming and community building. We value cooperation and collaboration, and dream of a rural region revitalized by the growth of a sustainable food system (small farms and food enterprises).
To achieve our vision, we strive to engage under-served youth and their families through outdoor, hands-on learning activities that help them to make connections between food, individual health, and the environment. By reconnecting children to food and nature, we aim to reduce childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, introduce them to opportunities to earn money off the land, and grow a new generation of young environmental stewards who value our natural resources and are committed to protecting them.
Food is the starting point for all we do to promote dialogue and collaboration and to find community-based solutions to the persistent problems of hunger, poverty, and chronic illnesses. We invite you to join us at the table, and have a bite, or two. Enjoy the earth's bounty!
We are an all-volunteer nonprofit based in Kinston, Lenoir County, North Carolina, with a mission of enhancing the quality of life in eastern North Carolina through outdoor programming and community building. We value cooperation and collaboration, and dream of a rural region revitalized by the growth of a sustainable food system (small farms and food enterprises).
To achieve our vision, we strive to engage under-served youth and their families through outdoor, hands-on learning activities that help them to make connections between food, individual health, and the environment. By reconnecting children to food and nature, we aim to reduce childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, introduce them to opportunities to earn money off the land, and grow a new generation of young environmental stewards who value our natural resources and are committed to protecting them.
Food is the starting point for all we do to promote dialogue and collaboration and to find community-based solutions to the persistent problems of hunger, poverty, and chronic illnesses. We invite you to join us at the table, and have a bite, or two. Enjoy the earth's bounty!
Our Story
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Kinston native, Lee Albritton returned home in 1991 after living abroad for a few years. What he found shocked him: a hometown very different from the one he had grown up in. The small, eastern North Carolina county seat had lost thousands of textile- and tobacco-related jobs in the 1990’s and was languishing with unemployment, poverty, chronic illness, and high crime and utility rates. With a new family and career, Lee committed to being in Kinston and trying to improve his hometown.
He met Julian Pridgen, a local pastor, who shared his concern for the town’s youth, especially the lack of opportunities for low-income children of color. Their occasional chats began focusing on the idea of creating a new organization that would replicate successful models for youth programming elsewhere in the country. Pridgen had been impressed by the Anathoth Community Garden near Hillsborough, which he visited while a student at the Duke School of Divinity. Lee, a wannabee farmer, had been similarly influenced by SEEDS in Durham, Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard and the food project in Boston. The two saw the potential of these programs for changing lives and creating opportunities locally. Since no local organizations had a youth empowerment approach using the urban agriculture model, they decided to start a new one; in 2010, they founded Common Ground of Eastern North Carolina, Inc. |
Our Board of Trustees
Valeria Davis Karen Mulcahy Tom Warren Iris Jones-Nelson Josie Walker |
Asia Butler Carla Zimmerman Pam Sheffield Kenneth Graves Lee Albritton |
Our Partners
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