Black History Month Profiles in Leadership: Carrie Davis finds solutions in land and soil

Carrie Davis, president and CEO of Wealth Watchers, Inc., a NeighborWorks organization, began helping Black farmers during the 2008 housing crisis, encouraging them to use their land to grow food to keep families and neighbors fed – and to provide extra money to offset job losses when factories shut down. In 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic and the economic crisis that accompanied it, she is again encouraging backyard farmers to let the land help with both food and finances. She knows there are solutions in the soil. 
  

"I didn't realize there was a name or a movement such as 'community organizing' until I became a member of the NeighborWorks family and that was in 2001," says Davis, who has been CEO of the Florida organization, whose reach expands into Georgia, for 13 years. "My personal mission has always been to help existing communities identify the resources they need to be a place where people choose to live, play, learn, be healthy, engage and raise their family. I was raised to believe that I had a responsibility to help the ‘least of these,' as my mother would say, even though we didn't have a lot."

She jokes that she wasn't born with a green thumb. But community organizing is something that is in her DNA. "It's therapeutic," she says of gardening, which she started doing herself a few years ago, growing lemons, aloe and moringa trees in her backyard, where she also does worm composting.

Connecting resources with the community

This summer, Davis and Wealth Watchers took on a project that is a good example of identifying a resource that the community needs. The organization began working with Edward Waters College, a Historically Black College (HBCU) in Jacksonville. The college's community gardens, an essential resource for local residents, had fallen into neglect. 

Through his outreach team, Rep. Al Lawson served as matchmaker, putting the college together with Wealth Watchers, an organization that knew about soil and all that could come from it. "They knew what we were doing with urban farms," says Davis. "So they asked if I would consider partnering with the college. We went over and started working with the garden. What we quickly discovered was how critical this garden was to the community, because it is a true food desert." 

A "food desert" is the name given to an area that doesn't have access to nutritious food – farmers markets or grocery stores can sometimes be miles away, for instance. Food deserts occur in areas both urban and rural. And there's a food desert in the New Town area of Jacksonville, Florida, where just over 42% of the community is living below poverty level, according to U.S. Census. Davis, who has worked for nonprofits for more than 25 years, has a background in public health and knows importance of nutrition and food. She found that students, as well as the surrounding community, needed resources for fresh vegetables. As the project continued, she found that some of the students at the college were dealing with housing insecurity as well as food insecurity. During school breaks and the summer months when they're not in the dorms, they have no place to stay. 

And so the initiative expanded beyond the garden, with Wealth Watchers looking to find ways to combat student homelessness. "We've been very intentional with how we're working with the college," Davis says. They're examining models in Massachusetts and working toward solutions. The next steps involve acquiring funding to survey students at Edward Waters College and securing land to build housing. 
 
When Wealth Watchers took over the Edward Waters College gardens last summer, weeds were everywhere. In places, it was hard to tell that anything had ever been cultivated on the property. But as the project continued, it became fruitful again and Wealth Watchers set out with a plan to make it more so. 

Davis hired two graduates from Edward Waters College for the Wealth Watchers staff. One of them is Hurtis Wyche, who grew up in the New Town area. As a child, Wyche had a neighbor who invited him to pick from her abundant garden. He always dreamed of having his own farm, he says. And he got the chance when he attended Edward Waters College, working in what was then a well-kept community garden. They packed a lot into just over a quarter of an acre on the corner of Pierce Street, he says: strawberries, collard greens, mustard greens, eggplant, lettuce, broccoli and more.
 
"I loved it. It was everything I was looking for," Wyche says. He was full of ideas of what to plant and grow. When he graduated, he would come back with some of the kids he mentored through the Boys and Girls Club. But he couldn't make it as often and could only maintain a small part of it. As leadership changed, the rest of the gardens became overgrown. But when Wealth Watchers took over, Davis hired Wyche as an outreach specialist. He now manages the gardens and is also helping other farmers with their own applications for loans and programs. It's his community, and he's a part of making it better.
 
Wyche says they should be able to get a lot of food out of the college gardens, feeding upwards of 1,000 people when all of the space is utilized. Wealth Watchers is working on other ways to get fresh food out of the gardens and to the people, too. Building on their goal of connecting small farmers, especially Black farmers, to larger markets, the organization is working on a grant for an initiative called New Town Farmacy. A grant would allow them to use both the gardens and other area farmers to bring food to the community. "It's using food as a prescription for good health," Davis says. 

Farmers who need more space beyond their own land "can grow at the garden and we will buy from them," Davis says. "We're also looking at some of larger farmers. Because of COVID-19, they have been unable to re-establish their markets." 

The Farmacy will help on two counts: It will bring food to the community; and it will give farmers an income they can count on, assured that their spinach and other crops will be distributed. "On a small scale, it's like the USDA's farm-to-family food boxes," Davis says. "It's all health-related." While she's hoping a grant will expand the project, she's starting the program now with the resources she has.

And she's finding a way to expand those resources. Always one to test things out, Davis found that some of the challenges the gardens project has faced over the years included not having enough volunteers, and a lack of power and access to water. Those are issues she and Wyche have been working to address, harvesting rainwater, utilizing a solar panel battery charger, submersible pump and timers. "We are also experimenting with a self-watering planter system for a smaller scale," she says. The hope is to create a community garden model that requires less human input, but maximizes the health benefits of the community "by increasing access to healthy foods and improving the social determinants of health for individuals and families living in a food deserts." 

Davis ensures that every initiative Wealth Watchers launches will generate enough money to take care of expenses and provide a reasonable return for the organization. She also makes sure it fits in the organization's mission, of building viable communities "by expanding the knowledge of low- to moderate-income individuals for the purpose of understanding the importance of basic finance and the accumulation of wealth."

To build communities, Davis says it's important to get input from stakeholders, residents who live there and who voice and identify the real needs. She knows the importance of what she calls the "triple bottom line," referring to revenue, mission and stakeholders. 

Davis has seen progress since 2008, when Wealth Watchers began working with farmers and serving as a bridge between Black farmers and the USDA. Black farmers had mistrust of the government, she says, after a history beset by prejudice that resulted in lost land, preventing Black farmers from creating generational wealth. But the farmers trusted Wealth Watchers.

"You start peeling back the layers and see all the layers of discrimination these farmers had to deal with," Davis says. Today, some farmers are still slow to trust the government. And Davis says she still sees some disparities. Her organization works to prepare the farmers with the information they need in order to take advantage of government programs, and to work through disparities when they occur.

Wealth Watchers works with 30 to 50 farmers on a regular basis. But their reach goes beyond the region through their involvement in online networks. Reaching out to the community is essential, even during COVID-19. Wealth Watchers has continued offering education and coaching, and has also generated a number of online workshops, including one last week on cultivating the next generation of Black farmers. Looking ahead to the next generation is key, Davis says.
 
Woodie Hughes, assistant extension administrator, a state 4-H program leader, and a panelist in Wealth Watchers' February's workshop, summed up the need to involve Black youth in agriculture: "No agriculture, no food; no youth, no future."

Davis, who has her eye on the future, could not agree more. Acting, as she always does – with intention – her goal is to make the future better. She's doing that for the current and future Black farmers and Black students in this community. 

Similarities in her work to secure a future for Black farmers may remind you of the pop culture TV show Queen Sugar, currently airing on the OWN Television Network. Securing land, jobs and food that equate to wealth building opportunities for Black farmers is a constant challenge that is the centerpiece of Davis' real-life work and the basis for the fictional novel-turned-television series "Queen Sugar." Fiction is imitating reality in the hometown of the Bordelones and their rural hometown of Louisiana. Meanwhile, Davis is doing the hard work and enhancing the lives of real Black farmers and her community in Florida, Georgia and beyond.