Dear Reader,
Bluedot has published many, many stories of people around the world making their little corner of it a wee bit (sometimes a whole lot!) better. And some stories just stick with Dot, such as this one from our archives about a group near Seattle that turned an abandoned ball field at a school for at-risk kids into a lush and productive community garden.
Community members learn about pollinators and beneficial bugs in the New Start Community Garden’s Pollinator Patch as part of a class co-hosted by Garden Hotline with instructor Julia Buscemi. – Photo by Taryn Koerker, New Start Community Garden.
“New Start is an alternative school for at-risk kids, and some of its students have court involvements, so the county court system paid some of those teens to work on the garden as a way to keep them active and out of trouble,” wrote Bluedot contributor Syrus Valentine. Taryn Koerker, the garden’s executive director, added that “It’s pretty amazing what a garden can do for kids that need some safe space.”
Valentine told us that “Not only was the garden a productive distraction for the students who worked on it that summer, but it also helped spark positive changes in many students during the school year. According to Koerker, many of New Start’s kids miss more classes than they attend, but now, when the science classes get immersed in garden work, attendance improves dramatically for many of the students. ‘When they start at this high school, their attendance is around 30 or 31 percent,’ Koerker says. ‘In the garden program it can be as high as 92 percent.’” Read all about it.
Sometimes making lives better can be as simple — and as life-giving — as transforming an abandoned lot into a place of planting, nurturing, and growth. Kudos to these Climate Champs — and Climate Champs around the world — who plant seeds and hope.
Transformationally,
Dot
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