Purposes: To foster youth-elder partnerships, learning together to replace lawns with wildlife, food and permaculture landscapes in the households and institutions of our communities. Problems: Our community is almost all commercial chemical lawns, threatening wildlife and health while contributing to flooding and lack of local food production. Youth are rarely involved in learning and planning for community sustainability transitions alongside adults.
Actions: Youth and mentors will adopt plots of land together to learn how to transition from lawnscapes to wildlife friendly gardens, food forests and permaculture landscapes on land held by households, schools, clinics, churches, parks, businesses and municipal commons. We’ve mapped at least two properties in each category for 2023. Neighbor2neighbor members will sponsor member-led and expert workshops every month. Community: We’re inspired by young people taking the lead with families, schools, churches learning with older neighbors gardening or creating habitat. Youth-mentor partners have been fortunate to get a receptive ear from these community institutions. The 10 youth leads and mentor partners are joined by another 40 or so community members in learning together, growing their individual projects and educating the community together through Farmers Market, Sustainable Yards Tour and other outreach. https://eepro.naaee.org/eepro/blog/neighbor2neighbor-community-action
