Sharing the Love Foundation

Sharing the Love Foundation's core belief is “the youth are our future.” We firmly believe it is our civic and moral responsibility to provide them with strategies and skills to be socially successful and conscientious citizens. We encourage our youth to be strong leaders within the organization, their schools, churches, and communities. Our programs promote youth involvement, complete with opportunities to participate in the organization's program design and implementation.

Our Young Ambassadors Program inspires our teens and college students to pursue their dreams, and strive to have a positive impact on the lives of others. The program incorporates youth empowering youth, mentoring the children in the Youth Can program, and uplifting and supporting their peers. For instance, they are excellent facilitators of our Youth Can activities and projects, which include enrichment programs throughout the year.  

The program has proven to be quite successful. Our founding Young Ambassadors are college graduates from universities and colleges across the U.S. and abroad and tirelessly remain active in our programs.  Their commitment and dedication to our programs have only bolstered their mission to serve college communities in numerous leadership roles. Moreover, the mentoring program is far exceeding our expectations as our Youth Can kids are eagerly entering the Young Ambassador Program, following in the footsteps of their mentors.  We sincerely believe exposing children to different cultures broadens their horizons, and builds respect, acceptance, and empathy, 

For several years, our Young Ambassadors have annually executed hunger relief projects, including but not limited to, providing youth lunches during the summer, and Thanksgiving meals for senior citizens and women' shelters. However, their stewardship was not limited to providing meals. They expanded their spirit of service to gardening opportunities throughout Kaufman County.  For years now, our Young Ambassadors have committed to service projects supporting and maintaining community gardens in the Kaufman County area.  STLF provides workshops, youth programs, and community service projects year-round for youth to learn how they can make a difference in the lives of others. Our newest addition to our Hunger Relief Program is community gardening.  We provide simple gardening practices to youth, which have had a range of benefits.  It is a known fact, that gardening can benefit children of all ages as it provides a great opportunity for children to learn and equips them with critical skills which can help them in other areas of their lives. In addition, gardening promotes healthy eating choices, ignites sensory exploration, develops motor skills, encourages responsibility, embraces diversity and community building, fosters relationships between youth and senior citizens, and provides community service opportunities for the young and old. 

 Thankfully, Sharing the Love broke ground on our very own community garden on March 20, 2021! We are blessed and overjoyed at the opportunity to develop land with the exclusive purpose of providing food for those most in need. Sharing The Love Foundation (STLF) established The Children's Legacy Garden in Forney, Texas to provide fresh produce for senior citizens, veterans, and other underserved community groups in the area. The Legacy Children’s Garden is in Forney, Texas, and is approximately 3,000 sq. ft. Mike & Amanda Lewis, and Forney Community Ministries support the garden.  We are extremely blessed and honored to have their support.

Our Goal:  

Harvest and distribute 500 pounds of fresh produce annually to those in need.  To date 3,000 lbs.

The original plans for the garden and our hunger relief program have grown exponentially as the world has seen a drastic increase in inflation and food insecurity. The need to bring awareness to healthy eating choices and provide resources to encourage gardening opportunities as a self-sufficient nutritional opportunity is more relevant than ever.  

2023-2024 accomplishments:

All garden donations from last year's NTGD went directly to the Legacy Children Garden needs including kid garden workshop classes and activities. This year our expansion includes informational signage, compost bins and a lemonade stand built by our youth scouts.  Other additions include a toddler gardening area, a pumpkin patch, two new perennial flower beds with medicinal and native plants, fruit trees, succulent garden. rain barrel, and an outdoor kitchen and workstation.  In addition to providing organic vegetables and children's garden workshops, we have created a whimsical environment.  These efforts increase our kids' garden membership by 20% and the volunteer program by 45%. 

Our youth programs have proven to be an asset to all our stakeholders; youth, volunteers, and the communities.  This year’s donations will again fund our hunger relief program.  Every dollar and resource are deeply appreciated.