Ecologic Outreach partnered with After School Matters to create the Green Teens program at our flagship outdoor education site at Hales Franciscan High School.
Green Teens is a stipend-based, green career exploration program for youth between the ages 14–18 in the city of Chicago. The Ecologic Outreach Green Teens Program focused on teaching teens how to cultivate their own food in the Hales flagship outdoor education space and urban farm, in the heart of the historic Bronzeville community on Chicago’s Southside. In partnership with Hales Franciscan High School, Ecologic Outreach taught not only urban agriculture, but sustainable practices such as complete recycling including the reduction of waste and the reuse and repurposing of items, and sustainable planning, including long-term models for work and play to inform a lifetime of healthy living for themselves, their communities, and the planet. A core goal of the program was to reimagine food, and where it comes from, in order to enable participants to view themselves as food producers and not just consumers. From there, students were taught to not only share the information and cultivate other growers in their communities through seed sharing and family participation days but to further cultivate community relationships for an intentional ecology within shared communities. Green Teens learned organic methods of cultivation and the importance of sustainability for future generations. Participants learned the art and beauty of nature and the many ways in which it may be integrated into our daily lives.
Unfortunately, Green Teens has been placed on pause, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. We hope to return to serving Chicago youth soon.
Our Teens
Bulding from Scratch
Why don’t we just make them ourselves?
As we prepared for the growing season, we wondered whether or not to purchase pre-fab garden bins. Several of the students from the Hales site had mentored students at our Bronzeville High School site as they prepared pre-fab bins. The students recalled that they were not as sturdy as the bins at the flagship site, and did not want the new bins at Hales to have the same problems, that is when one young man made the suggestion. “Why don’t we just make them ourselves?” That is exactly what we did. We purchased the raw materials, built a model as a group, and set them off to make it themselves. The bins were phenomenal, as was that cohort. It was a good day!
Compost Love <3
Our teens understood the assignment! Several teens in our latest cohort took the community partnership project to the next level. They approached Starbucks on 53rd and Lake Park in order to obtain coffee grounds from the day’s waste in order to add them to our compost heap. King composter and Ecologic Outreach’s very own Deeda, helped instill the love of the life cycle and what may grow from waste through decay.
I can’t be sure, but I think that the love put into building the composter, through drilling holes in a black plastic garbage bin (see center photo below) helped to grow that lovely heart-shaped potato (see photo below)
Sharing the Love
It does not take long for the word to get out that there is fresh organic produce available right in the heart of your neighborhood. Friends of Ecologic Outreach, Hales Franciscan Staff, parents of participants, and just folks who reached out online, or walked past and stopped to chat, everyone was welcome to partake in the bounty. Nothing made our teen participants more proud, or more likely to eat the produce themselves 😉 then to see others hauling off what they had grown. Certainly, love all around.
I started off at once for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart. I ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the hill would be moving.
Sal said it wouldn’t do.
When the amphitheater had cleared I crept stealthily to the top and as the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted portion of the great dead city I had little trouble in reaching the hills beyond.
But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn’t do.