Youth Grow

After school garden clubs, summer garden camps, school gardens, parent/child workshops, youth garden education training

Youth Grow programs encourage the next generation of veggie eaters and growers to be healthy. Our programs improve nutrition and decrease the risk of food insecurity by teaching children at risk lessons in where food comes from, the importance of eating fruits and vegetables and how to grow food through fun hands-on activities.

At least 75% of Youth Grow after-school students reported liking food from the garden including: collard greens, kohlrabi, beets, asparagus. 80-100% of participating students said they'd like a food garden at home.

2008 Program Highlights
Youth Grow reached over 369 elementary aged children through after-school Garden Clubs and Summer Garden Camps for a total of 2,915 learning hours. Our programs also reached over 200 children through one-time special events.

Youth Grow 2008/09 Partner sites include:
Alder Elementary/SUN CS (SE), Kelly Elementary/SUN CS (SE), Faubion PreK-8th/SUN CS (NE) and Vernon PreK-8th/SUN CS(NE)

Youth Grow makes a three year commitment to our partner schools. We provide assistance with Garden Committee devlelopment, technical advice, integration into the classroom as well as provide after-school and summer Garden Club programming.

In Garden Club, students learn to:

plant seeds and transplant vegetable starts
compost and tend a worm bin
harvest, prepare and enjoy fresh vegetables
identify insects
work together, plan and think critically

Each session is between 6-10 weeks long for 1-2 hours each week and each session’s learning activities correspond with the seasons.

"I love garden club, I wish I could live in the garden" - Alder Garden Club student, age 11.

SCHOOL GARDENS

In 2007-08 Youth Grow offered lessons within the classroom to support Portland Pubic School benchmarks; reaching a total of 384 students with in-class garden education. Twelve teachers participated (up from 5 in 2007).

Growing Gardens partners with Portland Public Schools Nutrition Services to support their Harvest of the Month program.

Each year, we receive many questions regarding starting or maintaining school gardens. In order to help meet these requests, we developed a School Gardens page, click here to find helpful school garden resources.

GROWINGGARDENS' is also developing a School Garden Specialist Certificate Training to train school garden specialist, the training will be piloted in June 2009.

Youth Grow Manager Caitlin Blethen co-facilitates the Portland Farm and Garden Educators Network (PFGEN) which aims to connect educators, volunteers, youth, families and community members who support healthy food culture, wellness and Portland-area food security through sustainable food and agriculture education. To find out more about this network, contact Caitlin (at) growing-gardens.org.

To encourage families to grow together, we offer Parent/Child Gardening Workshops. These workshops are designed to spark interest in children aged 6 to 12 in gardening, and provide fun ways for parents (grandparents, guardians, aunts/uncles, friends) and children to grow gardens together. Workshops topics include: Planning a Dinner Garden, Bugs & Insects, Sensational Gardens, Wondrous Worms, and Munch and Crunch see LEARN & GROW

“The kids program was GREAT! Really kid-friendly. We loved the song and the hands-on coloring/planning activity were great. Also having the kids plant in the container was nice, a great way to get them involved."

- Parent participant at the Planning a Dinner Garden Parent/Child Workshop, May 2006.

Volunteer Opportunities & Youth Gardening Educators Training:
Caring adults enrich and enhance our Youth Grow Garden Clubs and Summer Garden Camps! If you are interested in working with elementary aged children and can commit to volunteering 1-2 hours once a week for 6-10 weeks, contact Youth Grow Educator Emily at efielding (at) growing-gardens.org.

Seasonal volunteer educator trainings are held 3 times per year. No gardening experience is necessary. All volunteers are subject to a background check.