Tag Archives: Organic Agriculture

Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy

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Illène Pevec is the founder of A Child’s Garden of Peace. Read her book and learn about the philosophy and experience behind this wonderful Susila Dharma Projectfullsizeoutput_bdcb-1000

Find Growing a Life on Amazon.comPart engaging conversation, part comprehensive fieldwork, Growing a Life demonstrates just how influential school and community gardening programs can be for adolescents. Readers follow author Illène Pevec as she travels from rural Colorado to inner New York City, and from agrarian New Mexico to urban Oakland, California, to study remarkable youth gardening programs for at-risk teens. Expressive candid interviews with more than eighty students, substantiated by relevant neuroscience research and a framework of positive psychology, explain the life-altering physical and emotional benefits of gardening.

fullsizeoutput_bdc6As students share their experiences tending the soil and the plants, feeding their families and their communities, and guiding younger children, readers are given the opportunity to examine the largely unexplored topic of mentored urban gardening. Growing a Life will inspire educators, community leaders, and youth to team up and establish community gardens where they do not already exist and to involve youth in existing gardens.

Gardening has changed my perspective in a whole lot of ways. . . . I have applied that to my family, and I taught them. And they were proud of me. Not only was I not on the streets, I was doing something positive for my community. – Julio, 18, gardenign since age thirteen with Oakland Leaf

Illène Pevec, PhD, initiated her first award-winning gardening program in 1998 at an elementary school in Vancouver, Canada. Since then, she has gained national and international recognition for her work in the United States, Canada, and Brazil reconnecting children to nature. Growing a Life is her first book.

Read more about Illène’s book on Facebook.

Yayasan Usaha Mulia (YUM)

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Indonesia

During the massive forest fires in Kalimantan, YUM distributed haze masks and oxygen
During the massive forest fires in Kalimantan, YUM distributed haze masks and oxygen

Yayasan Usaha Mulia, known as YUM, is an umbrella charity that oversees numerous humanitarian initiatives in Indonesia, including:

  • Children’s Village Orphanage,
  • Preparatory Schools operating in slum areas,
  • Indonesia Relief & Development Network providing food, microcredit, supplies, and education to families in crisis,
  • Clean Water Projects for communities, building wells and reservoirs, and training local citizens to manage the facilities, and
  • Teunom Preschool, a collaboration that has rebuilt an Aceh preschool destroyed by the 2004 tsunami.
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Usaha Mulia Abadi (UMA)

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Mexico

uma-logo

Usaha Mulia Abadi (UMA) means “Noble and Eternal Effort.” The name was given by Bapak, and UMA’s mission is to preserve Bapak’s vision: “to support the development of skills, knowledge and comprehension, and recognize the manifest potential of children and youth in an atmosphere of harmony and respect.”

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Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS)

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Indonesia

Using participatory rural appraisal techniques, YTS helps villagers create a Community Development Plan
Using participatory rural appraisal techniques, YTS helps villagers create a Community Development Plan

YTS began working in the seven villages of Bukit Batu in 2009. Using participatory rural appraisal techniques, we assisted each community in the sub-district to make a village development plan, and started providing an annual village development fund to support local livelihoods. The project has identified two livelihood opportunities that show much promise for the development of successful micro-enterprises, these are fish-farming and chicken-raising. In both cases, profitability is limited by the high cost of material inputs, primarily for feed. To overcome this barrier, YTS wishes to provide strategic support to the seven communities by providing training and equipment to manufacture feed from local sources. In 2013, we wish to provide each community with appropriate technology and training in order to enable them to operate local fish and chicken feed-production centers in each village.

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