Through its education, community service and job training programs for Lawrence youth, Groundwork Lawrence cultivates respect for the environment, social awareness and healthy behavior, preparing young people to be positive role models and future leaders in their community.

Green Team

Green Team-Summer '09

The Groundwork Lawrence Green Team is a year-round program that offers part-time, paid employment for 10 Lawrence high school students each year. Members learn about and lead local environmental and healthy community initiatives, conduct research, raise awareness, challenge their peers to do community service and participate in hands-on improvement projects throughout the city. The program is intended to promote the protection and restoration of Lawrence’s critical ecological systems, natural resources and public health by engaging teens in advocacy and service-learning focused on the community’s parks, streets, gardens, waterways and vacant open spaces. The Green Team program has dual goals: to prepare Lawrence’s youth for a lifetime of environmental and healthy community leadership, and to invest in Lawrence’s future capacity to improve its physical environment.

Schoolyard Gardens

Leonard Garden Students

Groundwork Lawrence aims to cultivate healthy habits at a young age with schoolyard garden programming that promotes healthy eating, fitness and environmental awareness. In collaboration with administrators and faculty at local elementary and middle schools, Groundwork is creating a “seed-to-harvest” schoolyard garden curriculum that takes place during school days within the growing season. It currently operates schoolyard garden programs at the Leonard School and once the Cronin gardens are built this year, with the Tarbox School.

Summer Stewards

Summer Stewards is a summer gardening program for middle school students. Alongside Groundwork Lawrence staff, participating students plant, weed, water and harvest vegetables at the schoolyard garden sites for a full “seed to harvest” experience. To make the connection between garden and table, members take part in preparing healthy snacks and meals from their own harvest, part of a long-term goal to bring schoolyard garden produce into the school cafeteria. Current openings can be found on our Jobs page.

Green City Corps

Green City Corps is a summer program intended for high school students, ages 14 – 18, from Lawrence that will engage young people in assessing the current condition of Lawrence’s Urban Tree Canopy, and creating a strategy for future tree plantings which will ensure sustainability of the City’s tree canopy. Current openings can be found on our Jobs page.