Susannah Fotopulos submited an idea on Justmeans for Gardens for Good

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Susannah Fotopulos's Idea

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We are growing a healthy, welcoming community… one seed at a time. We are Plant the Seed (PTS), a not-for-profit program that creates "outdoor classrooms" in community and school gardens to educate and empower under-resourced young people—building cultural connections, advancing economic justice and improving their overall health and well-being.

Our garden education integrates Nashville’s new immigrant and refugees with U.S.-born youth, bringing together children from different backgrounds within identified food deserts—where median family income is $19,000—to grow food and to grow as a community. Partnerships with Catholic Charities, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and YMCA Bridge enable us to build strong relationships with U.S.-born and immigrant groups.

In growing, preparing and sharing food, children discover their cultural connection to the land, eat more fresh foods, share commonalities of food with their peers and integrate more fully into their communities. PTS recognizes we have a generation of young people who don’t know where their food comes from. Our program capitalizes on students’ enthusiasm to learn and contribute to the greater good. PTS utilizes issue education on a wide range of topics: basic gardening, nutrition, exercise, food preparation, food sovereignty and environmental stewardship. Participants engage in hands-on problem solving through service in a nearby garden that grows fruits, herbs, vegetables AND a community of food-aware, civically-engaged youth.

Many of our students are new immigrants and recently resettled refugees—young people who were literally uprooted from their homeland, where often agriculture was a significant part of their lives, if not their only way of life. Isolation, depression and the sudden lack of access to fresh culturally-relevant foods are alleviated through gardening. One Kurdish refugee student expressed, “I am back home when my hands are in the soil.”

Tennessee has the 3rd fastest growing foreign-born population in the U.S. Many Tennesseans misinterpret the impact of these new immigrants, focusing only on the cultural differences and discomfort with the changing face of their neighborhoods. PTS garden projects provide opportunities for the receiving community to experience tangible ways immigrants strengthen the very American values of self-reliance and hard work. In the garden, foreign-born students help revitalize American agricultural traditions that are being lost, yet are still an essential part of our national identity. Gardening provides a real way for these newly-resettled young people to improve their family’s health and contribute to their new communities.

The Gardens for Good grant would allow Plant the Seed to:
• integrate garden education at Nashville International Academy within all 3rd-6th grade curricula;
• break ground on an education/food relief garden in the Burmese community of south Nashville, serving 25 refugee families;
• enhance the capacity of individuals and communities to exercise control over a major determinant of health: improved access to fresh, culturally-relevant foods;
• “grow” youth leadership within diverse, under-resourced populations by educating at least 100 students;
• train 20 teachers and youth development professionals in garden-based service-learning;
• develop a toolkit for “Gardening as an Integration Tool.”

It all begins with just one seed…

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