Village Exchange Center

Village Exchange Center (VEC) is a nonprofit and collaborative community center seeking to empower and build community through social, cultural and economic exchange between foreign-born and US-born communities. 

In April 2020, VEC launched Village Farms at Stanley, an urban farming social enterprise. Village Farms at Stanley will serve VEC’ s mission by bridging community silos between the various socio-economic communities in Northwest Aurora and Northeast Denver through growing food, cooking, eating, and celebrating our diversity of cultural, culinary, and agricultural practices.


"We believe that food transcends all cultural, language, and socio-economic differences. "
-Village Farms at Stanley Team

Our four areas of focus are: food access in North East Denver Metro; awakening youth interest in agriculture careers; vocational and entrepreneurial track for adults; and long-term sustainability of the project through revenue generation.

This year, we need your help to plant our roots. Our program plan includes production on an outdoor farm and hydroponic farming sheds, a summer camp for youth ages 8 to 15 years old, and a farming apprenticeship for youth ages 16 to 24. 


But we need your help to raise the funds to make this plan a reality for the many communities we serve!

$10+          (Sponsors 2 packet of seeds)

$20+          (Sponsors  plastic-free farming hand tools)

$75+          (Sponsors cost of water for irrigation for 1 month)

$300+        (Sponsors compost and nutrients for our plant babies)

$1,500+     (Sponsors one month of specialized farm entrepreneurship training for program participants)

$7,000+     (Sponsors 1 raised garden bed)

$65,000+   (Sponsors one self-contained hydroponic farming unit (opportunity for branding rights)

**WHY START DURING COVID-19???***
We are glad you asked! If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that we rely on accessible food and systems that provide our sustenance. Therefore, after careful planning and consideration, we decided that there is no better time to launch a farm than now. We need to teach our community members how to produce their own food, while simultaneously embedding a food production campus in our neighborhood should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.

In the midst of this crisis and overwhelming bad news surrounding us, it would be extremely empowering and uplifting for our community to have an amazing program to gravitate towards after the worst of the crisis is behind us. If we start construction now, we’ll not only build a stronger more resilient community for the future, but also provide immediate economic relief to some community member. Our program launch will include employment opportunities during the farm build out, thus doing our part of enabling financial security during this upheaval.