Youth Village Grows More Than A Garden Thanks To DSVP

They say from small seedlings grow mighty oaks. But in the case of Youth Village’s expanded community garden program, this growth is more than just a metaphor. It’s a real life example of social innovation in action!

The young men at the county detention center facilitated through Youth Village Foundation  are busy planting the seeds in their own community garden complete with lettuce, squash, beans, tomatoes and much more. As part of a culinary arts program, they are learning about food from seed to table.  This year, DSVP partners have approached Youth Village to expand the program and help grow the food for the upcoming  bigBANG!  as part of the community garden buffet at the June 10 event.

DSVP partners stepped up donated dollars and time to help Youth Village expand to 12 raised beds which involved 340 concrete blocks, 19 cubic yards of compost from Mesquite recycle, seeds and, of course, plenty of hard work from young men looking to better their lives. Jerry Silhan, Youth Village Foundation executive director, volunteer master gardeners, along with other volunteers worked with the Youth Village team to build the five additional garden beds.  DSVP partners and Rockwall Farmers, Kim Martin and Laurie Bostic of Barking Cat Farms are the Farm Advisors for the project. In addition to helping plan for the event, they have created a proposed crop rotation plan that will support the community garden for the entire year. 

The seeds have been planted – both literally and figuratively – and now we wait to reap the rewards of our community working together for the greater good. 

Check back soon for status updates on this garden of great expectations.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 9:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.