The Vegetable Project, which digs in the dirt with Albany High School and Stephen and Harriet Myers Middle School students, would be pleased to showcase the names of friends who help make its research-based work with Albany students possible. We will mount a handsome sign on 2-by-10 sides of our raised garden beds at both of our school locations in exchange for a contribution of $100, telling the community that you are a proud sponsor of our work. And we will maintain the installation until March 1, 2022.
Funding supports creating hands-on learning opportunities for Albany kids, and especially kids with the greatest needs, by building gardens, growing plants and harnessing the power of exposure to nature. It strengthens our work during the school day and after the last bell rings. It makes possible paid internships for at-risk high school students and helps us offer workplace preparation in partnership with Albany’s summer youth employment program. And still more importantly, it moves forward development of an outdoor classroom at Myers Middle School and builds sustainability of our work.
Together, these initiatives, build equity, thus supporting one of the Albany school district’s most compelling goals, by boosting student contact with greenery, real breezes and soil. Indeed, extensive research links wellbeing, and academic achievement that depends on such wellbeing, to time in and around nature. And from backyards to summer camps to family road trips to beaches and mountains, time in and around nature is not distributed especially equitably.
We would be so grateful to shout out names of individuals, families, businesses and other organizations as raised bed sponsors. And we would be even more pleased if our friends shared a flier about this opportunity with their friends.
Please reach out at [email protected] with questions or to make arrangements. And thanks for more than 10 years of great support.
–Bill Stoneman
