Description
Start Date-End Date: 09/28/2023-09/28/2023
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Summary: Through our long-standing partnership with Grow Local Colorado, volunteers ages 8+ will spend the evening harvesting a vegetable garden and prepping it for winter at Observatory Park. All harvest from this garden supports Metro Caring and SAME Cafe.
Description: VOC is excited to team up with our long-term partner, Grow Local Colorado, to harvest vegetable gardens that demonstrate the beauty of edible gardens, engage community participation, and inspire Denver residents to grow their own vegetable gardens. Tasks will involve harvesting vegetables, weeding, and raking the soil.
Latitude/Longitude: 39.67536939705322, -104.95295714772806
Additional Information:
Camping Available: No
Physical Difficulty: Easy
High Altitude Project: No
Desired Number of Volunteers: 12
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Total Volunteer Hours: 0
Staff Hours: 5
Stipend Hours: 0
Project Summary: Overall, this project went great. It had a large turnout and people were able to take marigolds and basil plants home with them. About half of the volunteers were kids, all from the same school. They all stayed rather engaged and it seemed like a great opportunity for them to get a glimpse of local food systems. We ended with a fun raffle.
Successes and Challenges: Successes- We had such a big crew of enthusiastic individuals. People were really invested in learning about Grow Local.
Challenges- The amount of youth there was a bit overwhelming. They stayed engaged for about an hour and then lost interest. I would say the hardest aspect of this is it appeared the parents that were there expected me to be managing/parenting their kids and wanted to be more hands off. As kids lost interested and started dispersing around the parks, I had one parent come up to me and ask if I could gather their kids. It was a lot of unexpected management, but totally doable.
Lessons Learned: The youth filled up a lot of space on this project, which is great but I had many people waitlisted. The kids were all getting school credit for their class. Thus, maybe in the future we could create a youth targeted gardening project.
Special Notes:
Stewardship Education: As always, Grow Local did phenomenal with education about local food systems, plants, and decreasing carbon footprints.
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