LEAF Grow Together 2026 Recap
What a day! LEAF Grow Together 2026, our Fundraiser and Community Concert & Potluck on Saturday, September 12th, brought our community together at the LEAF Community Garden for four hours of connection, celebration, and conversation around environmental education, food donations, soil science and building community here in Fremont and the East Bay.
Guests mingled with local leaders, snacked on farm-inspired bites from Out of the Oven Bakery, heard live music from the Dream Achievers Band and The Niles Orchestra, enjoyed a fun raffle, and sipped homemade honey wine by Corey and homemade lemonade from our own LEAF beekeeper, Syndee.
Thanks to our community's generosity, we raised much-needed funds to close the funding gap for our sub-compact tractor for the LEAF Urban Farm. There’s still time to donate. We only need $2000 more in donations to pay off our tractor.
Thank you to Amy Chen, Field Representative for Assemblymember Alex Lee; Alameda County Supervisor Elisa Marquez; Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan; Vice Mayor Raymond Liu; and Council Member Desrie Campbell for attending and showing your support — and a special thank-you to Mayor Salwan and Assemblymember Lee for for their commendations recognizing the work LEAF has done.
We were inspired by the stories we heard from our partners:
Friends of Children with Special Needs (FCSN)'s Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Business Director, Sylvia Yeh, shared how healing it is for their clients to spend time at the LEAF Urban Farm every week
Aziz Abkari, President, Board of Directors, Alameda County Water District (ACWD), explained why ACWD provides their land to LEAF so our Urban Farm can produce thousands of pounds of healthy produce every year for neighbors facing food insecurity
Kathleen Hsu, President and Co-Founder of youth-led environmental nonprofit Everything Starts Small, shared how the success of their circular coffee grounds system with LEAF inspired the group to expand their circular economy initiatives to the wider East Bay
Livia Chen, Student Intern sponsored by CBC and a senior at Mission San Jose High School, shared how her love of working with children expanded to garden-based education during her internship with LEAF.
Thank you, Jiya Shah, for researching and exhibiting LEAF's history at the event.
We are so glad the raffle was a hit, with prizes including a wine tasting for 6 guests at 3 Steves Winery, two saplings from Down by the Bay Nursery, gardening books from Banter Bookshop, apple pie jam and LEAF honey, a painting kit from Art Pocket SJ, and a one-of-a-kind snake-and-snail art piece from our favorite Fremont artist, Zoe Caron.
Thank you to our financial sponsors — Star One Credit Union, Kaiser Permanente, Republic Services, and Alameda County Supervisors David Halbert and Eliza Márquez — and to our in-kind sponsors, including Costco, Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Banter Bookshop, 3 Steves Winery, Down By The Bay Nursery, Art Pocket SJ, Zoe Caron Art, and Tree Wolf, for your generous support.
Thank you, Tri-City Voice, for covering the event and sharing this special moment with the wider Tri-City area.
Everything you made possible on September 12th comes back to one thing: donating more fresh food to our neighbors. The LEAF Urban Farm grows hundreds of pounds of produce every year, and much of that regenerative agriculture work still happens by hand. A sub-compact tractor will help our volunteers move compost to the beds faster, so more of their time goes into planting and harvesting. More efficiency means more healthy food reaching food insecure families.
The need is growing. As federal SNAP (CalFresh) cuts take hold across Alameda County, thousands of local families are at risk of losing food assistance. The county is bracing for the loss of tens of millions of dollars in food aid this year, and our partner food banks are seeing more families than at any point during the pandemic.
That is why every pound of produce LEAF donates matters. Thanks to your support, we have donated 5,600 pounds of fresh produce to our partner food banks this year, and we are working toward a stretch goal of 7,000 pounds by year's end. As federal support shrinks, local, grassroots efforts and the community that shows up for them become an even more essential part of the safety net for Fremont and the East Bay.
We are so close to closing the gap on our tractor.
See all the photos: here.
Comments