The Grow This Throwdown

After a successful 2024 campaign, the Grow This Throwdown is back for 2025 with a new theme, a new mission and new grants for winning counties.

As you can see  in the transmission above, our astronaut is stranded far from home and needs your help. She only has enough supplies to last a few months. Her long-term survival and eventual rescue will depend on her ability to grow her own food. But this challenge is too big for the Grow This team alone.

When challenges present themselves to our astronaut out there, we’re going need your help brainstorming solutions and working together to solve them.

So get ready. This year, we're growing for the good of all. And failure is not an option.

For the latest updates on our mission, follow along with the Grow This Throwdown on Facebook and Instagram. 

About the Throwdown

The “Grow This Throwdown” is a statewide competition that aims to get West Virginians to move more, grow their own food and crush hunger in our state. 

Participants complete a series of challenges to earn points for their counties (see the leaderboard below). At the end of the growing season, the counties with the most points will win thousands of dollars in grant funding to complete improvement projects in their communities.

The grant money will be given to community organizations to complete improvement projects in the winning counties. Grow This will work with participants in the winning county, as well as their local WVU Extension office, to identify the projects and organizations that will receive funding. 

The competition will end Oct. 31 with winners announced in early November.

In 2024's competition Preston County won a $10,000 first prize grant. Pocahontas County won second prize, a $7,500 grant. Berkeley County took home the $5,000 third prize grant, sponsored by the West Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association.

Active Challenges

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