Through its program Project G.R.A.P.E. (Growing Readily Available Produce Everywhere), EBLLC, Inc. seeks to provide out-of-school educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth to learn about gardening and its importance in reducing the effects of child hunger and food insecurity.
Youth participants will be involved in creating the gardens while learning everything that goes intosustaining a food garden. Youth participants will also be given the opportunity to evaluate the skills and knowledge gained in this program. Some of the feedback that will be given back from these youth will be: what's one topic that they learned, what's one action they can do to combat child hunger, and how can Project G.R.A.P.E. improve in informing students about current issues in their school district in relation to child hunger. These questions and others will be utilized to make improvements to the program, and thelikelihood of students using the skills they learned while participating in Project G.R.A.P.E.
These past few months of 2021 we were able to harvest at least 25 lbs. of produce from our garden. Our students were able to learn how to garden especially at such an important time as this. They learned how to grow ginger, zucchini and other legumes.
Through this project, we felt supported through the effortless work of our students and their willingness to be outside and actively participate in each garden session.
We might change how to communicate with the school's leadership whom we partner with and how to recruit students into our programming.
Our favorite part of the project was being able to grow new plants in the garden along with our students and seeing their faces light up when they were able to harvest.
A tip in creating and starting a garden program would be to first know what your community needs are and how to best alleviate any stressors.
