TORIA TURNER
She/Her
Volunteer and Community Engagement Coordinator
Toria creates meaningful experiences for volunteers, Garden Resource Program members, and the broader community. As the Volunteer and Engagement Coordinator for Keep Growing Detroit, she coordinates community-driven opportunities and leads volunteer opportunities with natural warmth and kindness. This includes volunteer hours, hosting groups of volunteers, and other ways folks can engage in the community. Toria is driven by a deep love for the land and a desire to connect people back to the earth and each other. She is genuinely excited to meet every person who visits, eager to learn their unique stories and understand their "why.”
Toria is a native Detroiter and very proud of her multi-layered heritage. She draws deeply from her Creole, Mali, Chitimacha and Yucatec Maya roots. She brings generational reverence for cultivation and community stewardship to her work daily. This unique blend of culture shapes her perspective and fuels her passion for community gardening and Aj Kanan Lu'um -protector of the land. Her deep connection to the earth is inspired by her mother, who always nurtured a small garden and her grandfather, a farmer in Louisiana and Southwest Detroit. Their legacy of cultivation shapes her perspective and informs every part of her life.
Toria has been a Garden Resource Program member since 2022, in 2025 she was a part of the Growing a Medicine Garden cohort, and the 2026 Urban Roots cohort.
In her spare time Toria, volunteers as steward of Peace Garden where she teaches mothers about growing their own food and making baby food from what they grow. She is passionate about teaching how the biological systems of breastfeeding directly parallel the sacred act of putting a seed under the tongue before planting it. She loves to use musical healing to sooth and calm people but to also love on the land.
Her husband and children bring true joy to her life at the end of every day.
“It all starts in the womb, growing older does not call me to pause and stop living, but instead I am now called to teach others, I am called to continue learning, keep loving, and leave a beautiful legacy for others to carry on. I am reclaiming my journey as a teacher and keeper of wisdom.”