Meet Eileen O’Rourke of GoFarm in Golden

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eileen O’Rourke.

Eileen, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up on a small homestead farm in rural Pennsylvania in the 1970’s and experienced the rapid demise of small family farms as large farming enterprises took over the markets. I watched as valuable farmland was bought up and transformed into residential developments, which had severe consequences to local resources and caused us to lose our sense of community. This inspired me to pursue a career in environmental consulting, where I assessed land use impacts related to climate change scenarios for nearly 25 years.

Many years into my career, I decided it was time to shift my focus from defining environmental land-use problems to being part of the solution towards restoring personal, communal and planetary wellbeing.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I founded GoFarm at a crossroads in my life. I suppose it was a typical mid-life crisis or a season of restlessness in my life. Up to that point, my environmental consulting job offered flexibility to raise a family but lacked opportunities to use my leadership skills. Starting GoFarm was an intentional choice to lean into my creative entrepreneurial spirit and feed my need to make a difference in my community. I wasn’t able to pay myself for the first two years which meant juggling my consulting work while building GoFarm’s programs. I wore many different hats, often worked 60-75 hours per week, and relied on volunteers until I could hire staff.

Please tell us about GoFarm.
GoFarm is a nonprofit with a mission to increase the supply of and access to affordable, fresh, healthy, local food in Colorado. To achieve this mission, GoFarm supports local, sustainable farmers (through technical assistance, mentoring, land access, and food procurement), connects people with where their food comes from (through building markets for fresh produce) and improves access and affordability of fresh produce to under-resourced communities. GoFarm incorporates a systems approach, connecting local producers to consumers within their community, and always focusing on environmental sustainability in everything we do.

GoFarm is unique because our programs touch on so many different aspects of the food system. From supporting our local suppliers to educating community members and serving under-resourced communities – our programs are interdependent and intertwined. GoFarm has a fabulous team of passionate, dedicated staff working to improve our local food system and make our community healthier – I am grateful for their hard work day in and day out.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
This isn’t necessarily a specific moment in time, but what I’m most proud of in my work with GoFarm is building a wonderful team of passionate individuals. Seeing the GoFarm staff come together to support each other and work tirelessly to do what’s best for our community and our planet is magical. With all of our different strengths, focus areas, and backgrounds, we each bring a different perspective to the table – and have found ways to truly collaborate and achieve something great in GoFarm.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1301 Arapahoe St. Suite 105
  Golden, CO 80401
• Website: www.gofarmcoop.org
• Phone: 720.580.3276
• Email: info@gofarmcoop.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gofarmcolorado/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gofarmcoop/

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