Rodney Smith is the Community Outreach Manager for TigerMountain Foundation, an organization formed to help build flourishing neighborhood gardens ... and so much more. It helps build genuine self-value and competency in participants that enables people to rise above poverty.

The program uses gardening to touch lives in many ways, to: 

• Restore pride in a community through beautification of vacant lots.
• Inspire people to volunteer and engage in their community.
• Provide youth the skills they need to prepare them for employment—and a better life.
• Provide people on-the-job opportunities through landscaping, planting in community gardens, and selling and marketing what they grow at farmers’ markets.

TigerMountain empowers adults and youth as they garden alongside capable volunteer professionals who encourage and mentor them through every step.  Participants plant, grow and harvest produce they can use in their home. Local youth, troubled teens and adults get paying jobs taking care of our gardens where they learn what it means to be a valued and dependable worker. Garden produce is available at local farmer’s markets.

Participants provide landscaping services to local residents and businesses. Through this program, they learn real on-the-job skills. And the services provide operating income for TigerMountain. 100% of the funds TigerMountain makes from landscaping and gardening are invested back into the community.

Rodney has experienced first-hand the life-changing potential of TigerMountain, where the mission is simple: To empower communities to better themselves from within.

To learn more about the TigerMountain Foundation, click here: https://tigermountainfoundation.org/

Original air date: February 5, 2026.