Everybody Grows: A Community Partnership

As part of the 6th grade community engagement focus on Food Justice, we forged a partnership with Everybody Grows:

At Everybody Grows, our mission is to inspire and equip people to grow fresh, healthy food by bringing the home garden to everybody, wherever home may be.

We serve communities across the Washington DC area by making growing food possible regardless of location, age, income or mobility.  Our work brings families and communities closer through sharing the life-sustaining joy of growing food.

Inspiration Gardens are built in partnership with the DC Fire Department, local churches and nursing homes. These community-focused gardens provide an opportunity for people from all walks of life to plant together, harvest together and to learn how to grow their own vegetable gardens.

Jake is the Executive Director and an alum of SFS.  He had been looking for opportunities to bring his work as a landscape designer and gardener back to his alma mater.  Brad Ogilvie, long time SFS consultant connected us and this partnership was born.  This first we launched a seed growing initiative.  All of the students planted and tended over 700 seedlings.  Some died but some were donated and planted in DC community gardens.  As we solidify this partnership over the next year, we hope to soon have all 6th grade students going out into neighborhoods and helping with the gardens as well.  

Seed growing and soil quality are part of the 6th grade science curriculum so we will continue to deepen that connection.  We have found literary connections to Seedfolks and The Green Book, which I will teach this year.  It also connects to discussions about farming in The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.  It complements the OxFam Hunger Banquet and Global Village experience since it exposes students to the difficulties of actually growing food to eat, something our American privilege and culture separates us from.  

My coworker Stewart and I had the opportunity to present these ideas at the Private Schools for Public Purpose conference. Here is our presentation called Sowing Seeds.