Partnerships

GROW at Kazimour Farm is a 100-year-old apple orchard owned by the Kazimour Family. The Family reopened the Orchard as a Local Non-Profit Community Hub, with the goal of providing job opportunities and training to empower individuals of all abilities, ages, and backgrounds.

GROW will provide meaningful employment at the Orchard by …

- Developing Skills
- Fostering Social Connections
- Combating Social Isolation
- Engaging Volunteers

To accomplish our mission, we collaborate with a diverse range of community partners.

Core Crew Community Collaborators

Metro Area School Systems: STEAM Academy/Transition Alliance Program enables students to learn new skills to gain future employment in the community

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Students from Metro High School grew pumpkin seedlings in their on-site greenhouse and transplanted to GROW fields.

We are grateful to students from City View High School who built growing tables for the greenhouse.

Arc of East Central Iowa: Empowers individuals with disabilities and their families to engage in lifelong opportunities to live, learn, work, play, and advocate with full dignity and inclusion in their communities.

To the Rescue: A comprehensive Life Services Company with a clear vision of improving the quality of people’s lives.

Four Oaks – TotalChild® Workforce: Supporting teens and young people by providing community mentors, job shadows, and internships to enable stability and self-sufficiency by age 26

Community Volunteers

Garden Club of Cedar Rapids The club’s “Dirty Fingers” crew was instrumental in planting containers for GROW’s Buds and Blossom’s event, while another club member gave an entertaining and informative seminar on container gardening during the event itself.

Buds and Blossom container planting demonstration by the Garden Club

Corporate Groups

We are sincerely grateful to our corporate partners for sharing their time and talents helping GROW achieve our mission of empowering adults with disabilities.

More than 25 employees from Frontier-Coop spent Earth Day 2024 & 2025 planting over 80 apple trees.

Three enthusiastic members of Great America Leasing spent a fall evening harvesting over 80 lbs. of apples!

In early Fall over 20 individuals from Realty 87 spent a productive day picking more than 450 pounds of apples!

Ryan Companies selected GROW as their nonprofit partner for Ryan Gives Back Week 2025. Twenty Ryan team members spent the day at the orchard, harvesting 240 pounds of apples, tackling maintenance projects, and caring for 60 newly planted apple trees with weeding and mulching. They also adapted 10 greenhouse tables—lowering the height and adding wheels—to improve both efficiency and accessibility in our greenhouse.

TransAmerica employees visited GROW on a beautiful spring day to help with prepping, planting, tilling, and watering for the summer/fall crops.

Addressing Community Food Insecurity

GROW at Kazimour Farm & Orchard donates 10% of our annual produce harvest to local organizations combating food insecurity and hunger.

Feed Iowa First: Responds to increasing food insecurity in Linn County by growing culturally relevant vegetables for underserved communities for more than a decade. During Fall 2023, GROW sold/donated hundreds of pounds of apples to Feed Iowa First providing fresh produce for their clientele/food banks

Metro Catholic Outreach: Our new partner for fall 2024, supports 140 families weekly. GROW will provide fresh produce through sales and donations to help address community food insecurity.

Community Partners

“The Foundation is encouraged by the success of GROW’s inaugural year and looks forward to its continued progress. Your thoughtful revitalization of the orchard and farm — providing job skills, confidence, and independence to community members who don’t fit traditional educational or employment paths — fills a vital gap.” ~Andrea Orth, President of the Grandon Charitable Foundation

Thank you to the following businesses and individuals who support our mission!