Gold Winner Hope Blooms
Silver Winner Feed Nova Scotia
Bronze Winner Common Roots Urban Farm
There’s a riot of giggling noises as Jessie Jollymore answers the phone, struggling to be heard over the din. The executive director at Hope Blooms is in the midst of a product launch planning meeting with some of the organization’s younger entrepreneurs, a group of girls under 12. “The older youth do the dressing and their younger siblings and some younger kids wanted to know about making something from nothing and about putting some good into the world.” To start, the all-girls group is launching a hibiscus tea with notes of blueberry that features fair-trade leaves harvested by single mothers in Senegal. While the brew hits shelves mid-November, Hope Blooms is keeping busy with other initiatives like a book launch on November 20 and a mentoring system that’ll help other youth groups build their own community gardens and small businesses. “We want to turn the product into doing good,” Jollymore adds.
