Help us sustain a Youth Internship Program for low-income teenagers to teach workshops on environmental and health-related topics to peers and neighbors at an urban farm in a struggling neighborhood of Washington, DC.
Rooted in a struggling neighborhood of Washington, DC, Common Good City Farm is committed to cultivating a stronger, healthier, and more sustainable community. This year, our urban farm will provide fresh, healthy food, hands-on environmental education, and volunteer opportunities to 1,000 low-income youth.
This summer, we recruited 16 teenagers to participate in our Youth Internship Program, where they learned about sustainable food systems, responsible agriculture, gardening, healthy eating, public speaking, and other valuable topics while working on our farm and earning stipends. Now that they’re headed back to school, we need your help to keep these young people engaged and empower them to conduct afterschool and weekend workshops on environmental and health-related topics for children, other teenagers, adults, and senior citizens. Together, this cadre of community champions will broaden the programmatic reach of Common Good City Farm while advancing their own abilities to become active citizens and lifelong learners.
We have already recruited more than a dozen youth who want to continue working with Common Good City Farm. We need your support to provide these low-income teens with basic transportation stipends and adequate program supplies for the workshops they will conduct.
We will then recruit students, adults, and senior citizens from across DC to attend these youth-led workshops after school hours and on weekends. Our staff and adult volunteers will evaluate our teens’ performance and help them improve their professional skillsets.
We will conduct workshops at least two times per week throughout the academic year, with as many as possible taking place at our urban farm, given seasonality and weather constraints. We will work with community centers, schools, and other nonprofits to recruit participants and provide ongoing activities for our youth interns.
Our fight for environmental conservation and community development employs a long-term strategy for community change. And in taking this long view, we have chosen to recruit young people to become agents of environmental and neighborhood action. Our youth internship program not only teaches at-risk young people about environmental sustainability, local agriculture, good health, and the importance of leading active professional careers and civic lives, but empowers them to share these concepts with their peers and neighbors.
