CSG Food Justice Interns: Emmanuel Quezada-Romero, Amyah Limbacher, Grace King, Makayla Howard, Aly Williams, Rodrigo Nunez & DaTayveyus Bryant

The Power in Food–2019 Youth Internship Program

written by Makayla Howard, 4th-year Food Justice Intern

Summer of 2019 was one of our best summers yet. Our workdays were filled with harvesting, weeding, and planting but the best part of it all was having the ability to meet new people and learn a little more about our city’s history.  This summer we had the honor of participating in the Local Food, Local Places seminar. We, as interns, started our day with a workday at Charlottesville High School, where we later held lunch, gave our introductions and talked about the events before us. Afterwhich, we got on a bus and headed to Michie Drive to hear two of the residents share their history and stories about the garden. I personally have only been to this particular garden a few times and all the things growing there shocked me. Since the majority of people in the neighborhood are Nepali, they planted things like green beans, okra, potatoes and cabbage among many other things. For many of us, seeing the gardens and being able to show out partners all of our hard work was really empowering. We’ve worked at all of the CSG gardens this summer. The work at each garden ranged from tedious weeding sessions to constructing fences.

To read about the interns' collaboration with Charles Alexander on a project regarding the Charlottesville Twelve check out the blog post.

Growing our Summer Camps

article written by Calista Barbour and Jordan Johnson

This summer, we hosted 8 weeks of summer camp with elementary school students as we have for years, but what an amazing expansion of reach we had this summer. With gardens in full bloom and ready for harvest, it has always been a push of ours to get the harvests into the hands of the community and it became so much easier with visits of over 170 CCS students coming through our elementary gardens each week. We had the wonderful opportunity of strengthening our programming with growing support from Charlottesville Parks and Recreation. 

In the summer, we used to host around 30 kids a week at the CSG gardens through the Parks and Rec camp, Greenstone on 5th students, and Southwood Boys and Girls Club. This year, Parks and Rec relocated their entire elementary aged programming to CCS schools, which gave 170+ students the opportunity to come and get their hands dirty, eat delicious food and prepare the gardens for an exciting school year! Now that’s what you call a garden evolution!

Every week was filled with new, hands-on experiences for the students. The programming had some staple activities mixed with new and exciting experiments that were so exciting. One of our exciting new lessons was a way to highlight the amazing apple tree in the Greenbrier courtyard. Sarah Wayne and Traci Martin (PE Teacher at Venable) worked together to make a delicious apple jelly from the ripe green apples which was spread onto crackers and tasted by the students.

To hear more about the activities and see pictures all the fun, check out the blog post.