We understood the powerful role that food plays in uniting, educating, and empowering communities. In Puerto Rico there is little access to a locally grown and nutritious food supply. Since 2014, we started working in rehabilitation centers and with children.
We developed organic gardens in these communities and have taught how to convert the gardens into delicious food. Weekly, we visit different communities to teach the word of God with our educational-biblical modules.
The organization has a small, 1/2 acre farm, where we began to grow organic produce. At the farm, we have constructed an outdoor garden-to-table restaurant where we employ interns that have successfully graduated from our program in their rehabilitation center.
As they work with us in the gardens and kitchen, we provide discipleship classes and help them organize their finances. We also invite their children and wives to come to the farm and eat together as one big family. We began working with children to teach them the word of God through agriculture and culinary arts projects. We always finish every meeting eating together.
Meet our founders
Josiah Hernandez was impacted by farming and culinary as a young child. His grandparents would take him to the family farm in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. His grandfather would harvest plantains and other fresh vegetables and his grandmother to make wholesome food before the term farm-to-table was ever invented. He was influenced in Caribbean and international gastronomy by his family and the friends he met from all over the world while at university. After studying electrical engineering, he worked in consulting firms in Washington, DC during the day and in restaurants during the night. God moved his heart to leave everything and start a farm-to-table program to help vulnerable communities. In 2010, he decided to quit his job and go backpacking through Latin America for a year and gain more farm-to-table experience. He met his wife Dayhana Tamayo in Colombia and was enamored by her passion for doing God’s will and fighting for social justice among vulnerable communities.
Dayhana Tamayo was born and raised near Cali, Colombia in one of the regions that was most effected by the 50 year war by the guerrilla armies. She remembers as a child hiding in her home when the guerilla soldiers would pass by confiscating houses and robbing banks. God always protected her and her family. She later studied accounting at university and she worked for 8 years as an accountant. God laid in her heart year after year to help people in vulnerable communities in Colombia and in the Caribbean. One day at a busy bus station near her house she met a young man from Puerto Rico with a passion for social justice as well. She ended up marring this young man, Josiah Hernandez, and together started Siembra Vida.
