Root Cause Volunteers - An Afternoon in the Dirt

On a beautiful Wednesday afternoon, the Root Cause staff was able to escape their offices and cubicles for a few hours of gardening with 2008 Social Innovator, CitySprouts, at the Amigos School in Cambridge.  While pruning trees and painting plant markers, the staff learned about CitySprouts’ program model and growth. 

The ten-year-old nonprofit’s mission is to “develop, implement and maintain beautiful, resource-rich school gardens in collaboration with public school communities.”  It now operates district-wide in Cambridge, with gardens in each of the city’s 12 K-8 schools.  CitySprouts provides professional and curriculum development opportunities for teachers to incorporate the garden in their lessons, partners with Food Services to integrate healthy choices in the cafeterias, offers community days for the school’s parents and neighbors to get their hands dirty, and runs a summer internship program for middle school students to learn and earn a small stipend.  Through its garden’s presence in every school and its science curriculum, CitySprouts reaches every public school child in the city of Cambridge.  It eventually hopes to partner further with the cafeterias to provide them with fresh herbs and ingredients for school meals.

We were given numerous tasks, ranging from cleaning up paths in the herb garden and pruning an infant apple tree, to painting pots and plant markers.  Through these jobs, we learned, much as the students do, about the various plants in the garden and their uses.  We even got to take home some of the fresh herbs, like lemon balm and chives, that resulted from our pruning.  Besides its educational and service aspects, the project proved to be quite successful in team-building, as it provided regular staff members with the opportunity to spend some out-of-office time with the new class of summer interns.

Check out the pictures of collaboration at its finest in our Facebook album.  Also, be sure to support CitySprouts at the upcoming Taste of Cambridge event, the proceeds of which it will be a beneficiary.