Mary Ann Kalonick

I grew up in a family of 10 with one income. This made it a financial challenge to provide nutritious food for our household. Nonetheless, every dinner in our home included a salad and another vegetable.  I only found out later how this established a healthy basis for the rest of my life.

I am a Registered Dietitian and have seen the damage done to the health of my patients resulting from the Standard American Diet (SAD). The rise in Obesity, Diabetes and Heart Disease, to name a few.  What is lacking in the Standard American Diet is the nutrients only gotten from daily intake of fruits and vegetables.  The question was, how could I help these people not only get more access to produce but make it a regular part of their daily diet.

After learning about the Tower Gardens, I started imagining a different future. One where fresh nutritious produce was more accessible.  One where people in food deserts didn’t have to live without this necessary commodity. One where children grew up knowing the benefits of produce and are more willing to eat it when they grow it themselves.  Where rehab facilities and prisons can offer more of it to their residents to help increase a positive mental outlook. As you can see, the Tower Garden can be used and benefitted from in a lot of different settings.

With the knowledge of what Tower Gardens can do for the health of this nation, Towers for Change was born.

Shyer Maguire

Just after the turn of the Century I had reached that prestigious milestone of becoming “a half a century old”; and had been busy renovating an old house that became SEVENTH HEAVEN, a Day Spa in Hudson, MA, that is when I was first introduced to the  JuicePlus+®, company who put fruits and veggies in a capsule and more recently began marketing the TowerGarden®  I’ve been an organic vegetable gardener for 45 years now and a Tower gardener for about 8 of them

    I closed the Day Spa in 2004, remained a representative for the Juice Plus+® company and concentrated on raising two of my precious grandchildren.      

     It has been a great adventure introducing many people to Juice Plus+® and the Tower Garden®, and I have enjoyed having an additional income stream.

  BUT, There is always a BUT, then a few years back, I saw what Stephen Ritz was doing in the South Bronx. ………{my photo with Stephen and a I minute embedded video of him.]

         I wanted to make more of a difference, I had met and became friends with Mary Ann Kalonick a few years ago, and she came to me with an idea she called Towers For Change to get Towers growing food for food banks and making good produce more accessible.   I was blessed to be able to take a six week ‘bizacation’ with grandson Dan… now 20 years old; and we had a goal to get to the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners Area and ‘grant’ them some Tower Gardens®.  What a glorious feeling it is to be able to get the Towers placed where they are needed. After I came home from New Mexico, I was able to ‘grant’ some more to the Sorrento Elementary school here in Mount Dora, Florida.  I had exhausted my personal funds, as had MaryAnn with a  local High School project, and we decided that to truly create IMPACT we would need to officially make Towers For Change a real non-profit organization. I thank you all for reading this and invite you to donate and help us GROW  Towers For Change,  please SHARE  this website until the words “Food insecurity in America” are obsolete!