Last month, San Francisco’s Edgewood Center for Children and Families added sustainability to its curriculum, unveiling a new Garden Learning Center intended to inspire consciousness in young gardeners while further helping them acquire the skills necessary to rise above life’s many challenges.
Edgewood Center for Children and Families’ new Garden Learning Center, located in San Francisco’s Sunset District, is intended to inspire consciousness among young gardeners, while helping them acquire the skills needed to face life’s challenges. Photo courtesy of Edgewood Center for Children and Families.
By Bill Picture
Published: October, 2011
Last month, San Francisco’s Edgewood Center for Children and Families added sustainability to its curriculum, unveiling a new Garden Learning Center intended to inspire consciousness in young gardeners while further helping them acquire the skills necessary to rise above life’s many challenges.
"It’s about transformation," said Chief Advancement Officer Andrea Capozzoli. "We transformed an empty space into something that’s thriving and growing. That’s a powerful symbol."
And the symbolism doesn’t end there. Edgewood’s San Francisco campus (the organization has a second campus in San Mateo County) is located in the City’s Sunset District, a neighborhood whose residents bank more foggy days in a year than sunny ones. Cappozoli hopes that watching (and helping) a colorful garden come to life in this seemingly dreary environment will drive home for kids Edgewood’s message that anything is possible with a little attention and hard work.
"And the entire community will ultimately reap the harvest of what’s going on out here, no pun intended," she said.
Shaping the future, one kid
at a time
Edgewood Center for Children and Families has been helping at-risk youth in the Bay Area overcome abuse, neglect, mental illness and crises at home since the Gold Rush era with an ever-growing portfolio of programs that nurture and inspire young minds, bodies and spirits.
Edgewood already provides full schooling and a wide range of other services, including counseling and art therapy, for about 60 young people from all over the Bay Area whose needs exceed the level that public schools are able to offer. The situation in public schools grows more dire every year, as state budget cuts force school districts to do away with more and more programs and services deemed superfluous, leaving just the bare minimum curriculum.
For those students whose families are unable to provide a stable environment in which to learn and grow, Edgewood also offers full-time housing. Nearly half of Edgewood’s students currently live on-campus. Residents are welcome to stay at Edgewood until conditions at home improve. Unfortunately, that takes longer for some kids than for others.
"Of course, we want to help the kids and their families get better so they can go home, but there is no maximum length-of-stay here," explained David Mulig, director of education. "Some kids have been here for years. And when a resident is discharged back into the community, our team stays in close touch with them for up to two years to make sure that they are acclimating and that everything is going well for them at home. That’s an important part of what we do."
The Garden Learning Center, which includes an organic fruit-and-vegetable garden, a composting facility and an outdoor kitchen, affords instructors a unique opportunity to interact with kids outside of the traditional classroom setting. Not only is working in the garden a form of hands-on therapy for the youth, some of whom have emotional or behavioral issues, it also allows the kids to see that learning can be fun.
"For many of the kids, the whole experience of working in a garden is totally new," Mulig said. "Think about it. In the environments that some of these children are coming from, even grass is a pretty hot commodity. You and I pretty much take grass for granted. But playing on grass and rolling around on it are entirely new experiences for some of these kids."
Being green is hardly a priority in households struggling just to get by, so composting is sure to raise a few young eyebrows when it’s taught this year. Volunteers recently built compost bins where students can toss their food scraps and garden waste for use later in the garden.
"It’ll be fun for the kids to be able to open up the lid of a compost bin and watch it breaking down, then put it back into the garden later," Cappozoli said. "And they’ll learn about the whole cycle of life, which I think they’ll find really interesting."
Healthy diet, healthy mind
Cappozoli added that working in the garden also makes it easier to broaden the culinary horizons of the kids, most of whom were brought up on diets consisting largely of fast food.
"They’re more likely to eat a vegetable that they picked with their own hands," she says. "For instance, lettuce is just that green stuff on a Big Mac to them until they go into the garden and pick it themselves. Then they taste it and go, ‘Wow!’ Artichokes, too. They’ve never even heard of an artichoke, much less tasted one. "
Shaping more sophisticated palates will make it easier for Edgewood’s in-house chef, who prepares cafeteria-style meals daily for the kids, to steer them away from the usual high-calorie fare and put more brain food in their stomachs.
"We’ve got a great chef here who’s really into organics," Mulig said. "The whole idea behind the outdoor kitchen is for the kids to be able to pick something from the garden, prepare it and eat it."
Mulig believes that teaching kids where food comes from connects dots that facilitate a better and healthier relationship for them with food and the environment. The ultimate goal, he says, is to help the kids make healthy choices—from the food they eat to how they interact with their physical surroundings.
To that end, Edgewood is currently in talks with the UC Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Program to develop a comprehensive garden-based curriculum.
"They’ll get to learn what kinds of plants attract birds and butterflies, and all about the process of pollination," Mulig said. "It’s another way that we can help change their lives. We want them to be healthy in every way that they can be."
Edgewood will also soon be home to a coop of chickens, meaning there will be fresh eggs for the kids to collect. "They’re going to be so excited," Cappozoli said. "It’s just so fun to watch their faces light up. It’s as much fun for us and for those providing the instruction as it is for the kids."
For more information about Edgewood Center for Children and Families, visit www.edgewood.org.
Edgewood staff say that working in the garden will be an entirely new experience for many students. In addition to serving as a form of hands-on therapy for the youth, some of whom have emotional and/or behavioral issues, teachers hope the experience will show kids that learning can be fun. Photo courtesy of Edgewood Center for Children and Families.
The Garden Learning Center includes a working garden and an outdoor kitchen, where students will be able to prepare dishes with the fruits and vegetables they pick in the garden. The Center’s curriculum will include lessons on the benefits of a healthy diet. Photo courtesy of Edgewood Center for Children and Families
