Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee Opens East St. Louis Innovation Center To Teach Youth Urban Agriculture And Food Innovation – AfroTech

Jackie Joyner-Kersee wants East St. Louis, IL, youth to have a bright future.

Joyner-Kersee is an Olympic track-and-field champion from East St. Louis. According to the University of Illinois Alumni Association (UIAA), she was raised in a family that experienced food insecurity. Since 1988, she has dedicated her time to ensuring youth from her hometown have access to the support they need to achieve success with education, sports, and leadership development through The Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation.

Innovation Center

Kersee’s foundation has partnered with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and the East St. Louis nonprofit Lansdowne UP to open a 24,000-square-foot center that empowers youth and their families in STEAM education, UIAA notes. Named the Joyner-Kersee Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Innovation Center (JJK FAN), the facility opened in June 2026 to support the following areas:

Since 2016, Kersee and agricultural technology entrepreneur Mark Scholl have planned trips for children to grow corn, radishes, and soybeans across the Mississippi River in north St. Louis, MO, per the outlet. The pair first met on a plane bound from Washington, DC, to St. Louis, and Scholl now sits on the board of Kersee’s foundation. They have a shared vision of introducing young people to agriculture and science careers.

“We talk about the urban-rural divide all the time, but we never invite the urban,” Scholl explained to UIAA. “Agriculture is never going to have another opportunity like this, having Jackie Joyner-Kersee be part of the conversation.”

However, it was always a long-held goal for Joyner-Kersee to have a permanent location for this dream. In an Instagram post, she said that she once attended a community center in her hometown, and it inspired her to start one of her own.

At the innovation center, children are learning how to plant, tend, and weed a vegetable garden through the Seed to Table summer program, UIAA reports. They also create healthy snacks in the kitchen — this year with the help of University of Illinois Extension 4-H youth development educator Grace Margherio.

 “After Seed to Table, they can visualize how their food grows on plants and want to be more involved in growing and cooking it,” Margherio told the outlet.

Additionally, JJK FAN houses an embryology and incubation program that introduces children to embryo development and chicken breeds. The center also pairs students with scientists and researchers, including faculty members from the University of Illinois Cancer Center, who help shape their understanding of science careers.

“We’re helping our young people to see that when they plant a seed and take care of it, it grows,” Joyner-Kersee expressed to UIAA. “That’s what we want them to do for themselves. They are the seed. We’re going to surround them with people to help nurture them. If they’re open to that support, they’re going to thrive and blossom.”

JJK FAN includes a 11,000-square-foot “passive solar greenhouse” that has the capacity to produce more than 30,000 pounds of food annually and includes a learning lab, according to the outlet. It’s the first ever built in the U.S. Danforth Center plant scientist Antonio Brazelton planted 19 varieties of heirloom collard greens and conducted research that students could learn from as well as participate in by taking part in a multi-day harvest.

“The research will help growers breed collards that will grow where soil isn’t as rich as in other places. Youth will learn about the important role science plays in our food system while tasting different kinds of collards,” according to a description of the research shared on JJK FAN’s page.

After additional study on the collards, the greens were given to community members. Jordon Gully was one of the students involved in the heirloom collard greens research as an intern and completed a science fair project on corn leaf architecture.

“JJK FAN has been at the core of everything for me,” Gully, now an Illinois sophomore in the College of ACES on a full scholarship, said to UIAA. “Our community is a food desert. Learning that we can impact change within our community by growing food and learning the science behind it in order to help others eat healthily has really enlightened me. It’s the reason why I’m in the College of ACES. I want to learn about agricultural policy, so I can make an impact and change the status quo.”

Looking ahead, JJK FAN is working on launching hands-on programs and training that will target food production, agricultural technology, innovation, and nutrition to continue building on its efforts to create “life-changing opportunities” for the community.