I am a volunteer, also known as a “big green heart buddy” with The Green Project. This is a local farm-2-school program. Every week, about 5 other volunteers and I go to Sanders-Clyde Elementary and help out with some sort of garden-based, educational lesson for a class of 4th grade boys. These lessons and activities change every week. Most of the schools that offer Green Heart are Title 1 public schools in a labeled food desert. Many students come from low-income households and lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The ultimate goal of Green Heart is to connect students to locally grown produce while engaged in a fun, meaningful lesson. In order to literally connect students to the local produce, urban gardens have been created at every Green Heart school. Green Heart’s mission and service directly relates to student learning outcome #1. Green Heart was created in hopes to address the social, cultural, and economic factors related to food disparity while connecting children and mentors in a fun and educational way.
2 weeks ago in Green Heart, we made smoothies. Our class gets especially excited when they hear we are cooking or making something. Obviously, the gardens do not have every single kind of produce (there are 5 medium sized raised beds at Sanders-Clyde). They try to plant a few things at a time that are typically in season. Similarly, not all of the produce can feed an entire school for a certain period of time. So, sometimes we need extra food or supplies brought in to complete a lesson. Our program manger, the leader of the lesson, brought in a couple other items to make the smoothies. These items included a blender, coconut milk, and frozen berries. We went out to the garden and had the students pick fresh kale and spinach for the smoothies. A few boys were pretty eager and tried them raw. Most enjoyed it! While the students were taking turns harvesting the plants, others were picking up trash around the garden and watering it. The boys asked why they have to pick up trash and why they were individually using watering cans instead of using the large spray-range hose. I told them that this is their garden and they should all take accountability for keeping up with it. Just like we learned how this is OUR earth and we should all be accountable for taking care of it. After this, the boys got to make their own smoothies and add whatever ingredients we had. They really enjoyed them.
This is so awesome! I’ve never heard of the Green Heart Project but I’m really interested in learning more. It’s an excellent example of how interconnected environmental justice and social justice are. Food equity is such an enormous problem in the US, and especially in low-income areas of Charleston County. It’s a wicked problem at it’s finest: there aren’t enough easily accessible places for affordable food, gentrification of low-income communities forces people even further away from food sources, little to no local or sustainably-sourced foods are available to low-income communities, viable farm land in the area is being limited by housing and corporate developments furthering the issue of food equity, and all of that barely scratches the surface of these deep social issues.
I love the whole concept of Green Heart from what I understand. It’s so important to not only teach about sustainable farming and food access, but to also foster self-sufficiency and empowerment. Being able to spark an interest or passion in kids is the foundation for greater change!