2715 Reading Road
Cincinnati, OH 45206
Youth Education Program
The Civic Garden Center builds community through gardening, education and environmental stewardship. Families and neighbors are brought together and taught how to take responsibility for their environment and develop a strong sense of community. A Dater grant was awarded for the expansion of professional development training for teachers through the Youth Education program with the goal of getting more teachers able to provide a robust hands-on experiential school garden program and botanical education at more schools. However, the Covid 19 pandemic disrupted the full implementation of this program.
The Youth Education program was probably the Civic Garden Center program most challenged and disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. School closures coincided with the start of the 2020 spring season and as a result no school garden-based outreach programs, field trips, or teacher trainings took place. The Center's three Summer Sprouts partners decided either not to hold summer camp or not to add additional programing to the camp day. In the fall, some schools did return to in-person instruction but did not allow outside partners to lead programming and many other schools continued with virtual instruction. The Center quickly pivoted and focused on supporting schools needing assistance maintaining their gardens, growing food that could be donated to food pantries, and creating short instructional videos for students and teachers to access for their online education.
In 2020 the youth education program was able to accomplish the following:
• Provided weekly and individual garden maintenance days in 5 school gardens
• Worked with 28 volunteers to provide more than 210 hours of support to school gardens
• Donated more than 350 pounds of fresh produce from Pendleton Garden to a local food pantry
• Created variety of short instructional videos and virtual field trips
• Worked with teachers to identify outdoor learning opportunities on their school grounds
Click on any photo to enlarge.
