Summer Stewards

This summer our Summer Stewards middle school program has been wrapped into our brand new Urban Adventurers Summer Program, a 6-week summer youth program we're offering this summer in partnership with Mass Audubon. Please visit our Urban Adventurers Page for more info! See below for info about last year's Summer Stewards Program...

Summer Stewards is a summer gardening program for middle school students that Groundwork Lawrence piloted in the Summer of 2010. With 6 members lead by two Green Team alumni, Summer Stewards' first season was a success! We created this program to offer gardening and nutrition education to a younger demographic, to create a feeder population for our Green Team program and to maintain our school yard gardens over the summer break.

This past summer, the Summer Stewards learned the basics of gardening while planting, watering, weeding, and maintaining our schoolyard garden beds at Leonard Middle School and Cronin Park, adjacent to Tarbox Elementary School. They also learned how to compost. The six students participated in weekly cooking session where they learned how to maintain a balanced, healthy diet and make positive food choices. The youth learned new cooking skills and created meals using healthy recipes in the Lawrence CommunityWorks (LCW) kitchen, and shared their samples with LCW staff. They also cleaned both Cronin Park and Leonard garden sites throughout the summer, painted a trashcan as part of a LCW's ' “Pick It Up, Throw It In” anti-litter campaign, and exercised each program day by walking across Lawrence between Cronin and Leonard garden sites and by doing obstacle courses and other physical activity in the parks. At the end of the program, Summer Stewards hosted a dinner event for their families, where they served a healthy 3-course meal that they had prepared, and gave presentations on the community and gardening work they had done throughout the summer. We are looking forward to continuing this youth program for many years to come!