Simple and sustainable steps are the key at this initiative from Sustaining Way
The yellow house stands inconspicuously in a once-blighted neighborhood nestled between the Reedy River and Green Forest Park. But the home, with its incongruous solar panel overlooking an acre-plus backyard garden, houses what is arguably the most fascinating community service organization in Greenville.
Today, Shekinah Sanchez and Jenna Seigworth stand outside Annie’s House, having just returned from helping a neighbor build a garden of her own. While the Upstate’s best-known nonprofits provide affordable housing, food banks, and such, Annie’s House serves as a demonstration site for hyper-local sustainability.
“We’re putting the environment at the forefront of caring for people and for neighborhoods. And I think a lot of times you get one and not the other,” says Seigworth, 23, who moved from Pennsylvania to Greenville three years ago as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer.
She is among the roughly 10-member staff at 60 Baxter Street in Nicholtown, whose rich history has evolved from emancipation to entropy to exclusivity.
In the 1870s, freed slaves moved into the area where, as local lore has it, everything cost a nickel. A century later, the neighborhood, like so many urban areas at the time, fell victim to decline and decay. Now, gentrification has pushed rental rates to a monthly average of $1,200, with home prices starting in the $400,000s, according to Zillow.
Enter Rick Joye, Sustaining Way’s founder, who is also an executive at Michelin North America.
In 2010, he learned his sister had contracted a rare form of cancer. Two years later, with a vision for Annie’s House, he was inspired to launch the interfaith nonprofit. Its mission: “to demonstrate and proliferate affordable ways to care for people while caring for the environment,” as its website says. The house, which he named after his sister, opened in 2015; Anne-Marie Joye Fields, a physician, died in 2022.
No one lives in Annie’s House, but plenty grows in the house that serves as Sustaining Way’s headquarters and educational site.
“This is an example of what other people could have, like gardens in their backyard,” says Sanchez, 20, who lives a short walk away and started interning at Sustaining Way last June.
Near the home that she shares with her mom, she says, a community center and trees once helped sustain the neighborhood. The community center is undergoing redevelopment. “The park is gone,” she says. “It’s just houses now.”
Warm Annie’s House Welcome
She works with Sustaining Way’s youth and food security initiatives, including community food distribution and the Backyard Garden Program. Most recently, she joined neighborhood children at a “pollinator craft night” with butterflies, beetles, and bees.
“I’m definitely less afraid of bugs now,” she says with a satisfied, fulfilled smile. “Like, I used to jump at bees.”
The backyard garden buzzes, too. Volunteers grow melons, okra, greens, pear and persimmon trees, muscadine grapes, and mushrooms, among other crops. Chickens, too. Inside, grocery sacks are filled with produce and donated food awaiting distribution at Hope Baptist Church’s parking lot nearby. The kitchen is used to demonstrate how to prepare garden-grown food, canning, and the like.
Indeed, a lot goes on at Annie’s House—just as so much is happening in Nicholtown and Greenville. Sustaining Way shows how to keep all that momentum . . . sustainable.
“There’s so much up-and-coming overdevelopment,” Seigworth says, “and as people come here who have the resources, it’s important to think about who was here first and the history that’s here. And one of the ways that you can take part in preserving that history is by supporting Sustaining Way, because we’re here embedded in this community, trying to do that preservation alongside them, not for them.”
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By the Numbers
The home and garden that serve as Sustaining Way’s flagship demonstration site for sustainable practices in 2023 has so far:
- Installed 19 backyard gardens in Nicholtown
- Offered 57 educational opportunities
- Worked with more than 80 community, business, academic, government, and philanthropic organizations
- Hosted 224 community engagement events
- Served 2,151 program participants
- Distributed 10,177 food security bags
Sustaining Way’s Sustaining Ways
Volunteers for the interfaith nonprofit, in cooperation with local farmers, distribute fresh produce, hot meals, and resources to Nicholtown residents. Other programs include:
- Steward Youth Program — Opportunities to provide sustainability and leadership training to children and teens.
- Community Coordinator Program — A full-time development position provides community advocacy and relationship-building within the community.
- Nicholtown Community Health Initiative — The group works to address the needs of the community, including energy burden, food security, mental health, and personal health.
To Donate, Volunteer, and Learn More
Donations can be made at givebutter.com/sustainingway. Find out more at sustainingway.org.
