Earth Steward

I grew up in the suburbs, but did so with parents who had grown up in a nearby farming community, so getting into the soil around us was always something that was just part of who we were.  When he was a kid, my dad's family lived on a dairy farm, and my great-grandfather and great-uncle worked for a large meat-packing plant.  When I knew them, my grandmothers were off the farm, but both had huge gardens and helped teach us how to garden too.  This lead to my family always having our own large vegetable garden and not shying away from the slaughterhouse when it came time to buy our meats.  Having a connection to the earth made us all more aware of where our food was coming from and made us feel more connected to the land we lived on.  It also gave us the sense of being not just consumers, but part of a community in which all the people in it worked together as gears toward a common goal.

Now as a volunteer with and supporter of more than one urban gardening group in the city, I'm really beginning to believe more and more that getting urbanites out into their community to dig in the dirt is one of the best ways for us to turn our habitually failing neighborhoods around.  Doing so creates a sense of ownership and pride in those who take the time to clean up a space and plant some flowers.  Neighbors are given the chance to meet one another and talk about a common goal, whether it be the beautification of a median strip or the creation of a community vegetable garden.  When we're no longer strangers, we start to see a way to work together to make better the places we live in.


From California Watch,

Earth Steward is the result of a novel partnership among the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the San Francisco Police Department and The Garden Project, a horticultural program geared originally to ex-offenders that now focuses on at-risk young adults. ... the Earth Stewards program combines life skills, counseling and environmental education with a paid job protecting natural resources, including the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, which supplies drinking water for 2½ million people in the Bay Area, and the Crystal Springs Reservoir in San Mateo County.

Visit the Garden Project's Earth Stewards website, which has now been added to the "D10 Good Stuff" section.