About Us
If you want to learn more about us, you’re in the right place. This is the story of the foundation we are built on.
Food
Equitable healthy food distribution is something that PUENTES stands for. From reaching out to government leaders, to providing safe and healthy produce for your family dinner, we fight for everyone to have access to fresh produce.
Education
Our education programs seek to build a connection between people of all ages and the food on their plate.
Our Core Values
This is what we believe in
Community
Our organization is creating a natural food revolution across the entire central valley of California. We build community partnerships with local businesses and individual members, seeking to fight hunger one plate at a time.
Our story
The third goal of the United States Peace Corps is for Volunteers to bring home what they learned abroad.
After three years of service in Peace Corps Panama, our Founder, Jeremy Terhune, returned home with a vision. He wanted to motivate disadvantaged families, senior citizens, and youth to break the cycle of childhood obesity and other food related health issues surrounding inadequate diet, poor eating habits and a lack of access to healthy whole-foods. After working for several years as a Community Organizer in South Stockton, he was surprised to discover that areas of his hometown, Stockton, CA, were food deserts and were actually more food insecure than his Peace Corps site. In 2009, Jeremy rekindled his inspiration from collaborating with self-sustaining farmers in Panama in order to create change by and for Stockton communities; thus PUENTES was born.
With the help of a dedicated group of community volunteers, PUENTES created their first community garden in 2009 at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds with an annual budget of $4,000, and has since founded Boggs Tract Community Farm.
We have helped to transform millions of dollars of regional and community investments into programs that incubate food based entrepreneurs, encouraged hundreds of children to grow and eat fresh produce, and have mended the cultural connection between generations of families and their food.
As evidenced by Stockton’s nascent urban farming ordinance and our city’s Food and Ag Action Plan, PUENTES continues to grow and has helped shift the attitude of regional policy makers and community members alike towards embracing urban agriculture in order to resolve hunger at the root level as a community planning issue.