This summer I spent some time gardening with middle school kids living in one of Denver’s Housing Authority complexes.
These kids are growing up poor. Not all of them live below the poverty threshold but many do. In the United States, more than 1 in 10 people live in poverty.
Here in Denver, our numbers unfortunately beat the average-2 out of every 10 people live in poverty and 3 in 10 of our children live in poverty.
Living in poverty isn’t just about a lack of money. It also means more health problems and difficulty with acquiring affordable and healthy food.
Learning about growing one’s own food can help combat food insecurity, so every week my Denver Urban Gardens co-workers and I trundled over to the DHA community to work on their youth center’s garden.
It would be easy to say the garden we planted was both figurative and literal. In fact, the process of working with these kids was not nearly so romantic. Like the garden, it was messy, contentious, unruly but still eventually a space to learn and grow for the kids, and for me.
In May when we began the garden project, I met two tough, ferociously intelligent, fiercely independent and seriously anti-authoritarian young gardeners. They made jokes about “living in the projects” and tried-generally succeeding I might add – to portray a tough demeanor to match.
Both of these young ladies, like most of the kids in those first weeks of gardening, had absolutely no interest in getting their hands dirty. When it was time to start planting seeds, general adolescent disinterest swept through the group.
Eventually, though, each student cautiously stuck their fingers in dirt and planted their seeds.
Although we intended for the garden to be planted and cared for communally, these two young women were not interested.
They wanted their own space and their own plants. Appeasing their request, I showed them how to interpret the information on the back of the squash seeds, and then showed them how to water without drowning their fledgling plants.
From the moment the seeds were planted in the ground, these two young ladies took particular interest in watering, protecting, weeding and caring for their plants.
They simply couldn’t conceal their excitement when the green shoots emerged from the ground days after submerging the seeds.
As they enjoyed the success of the new sprouts and felt more knowledgeable about their small section of the garden, their outlook expanded.
Now they wanted to be in the dirt and weeding the entire garden. When they watered their plants, they went ahead and watered everything else too.
Sure, the squash came first, but as they felt empowered to care for that one small section of land, they carried that confidence and knowledge with them into broader spaces.
The garden helps these kids connect with the land and with their food. They learn to grow their own healthy food affordably and close to home. And it does more too.
As this story illustrates, learning gardening skills can help empower these kids to take care of themselves and their community.
Communication research points to the process of interaction to rearticulate power dynamics and provide a space for empowering individuals and communities.
Our interaction with the students achieved this in part. But the effects of gardening were not just felt by the students.
My interaction with these gardening students also helped me rearticulate the power structures I see in my life-and even some that I might be a part of continuing.
As we address and work toward the alleviation of poverty, I encourage you too to get into the action – even in things as simple as communicating and gardening.
Volunteer, make friends, push boundaries, interact and start the process of empowering yourself and your community.
Stephanie Brooks is a Masters student studying Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was a summer intern at Denver Urban Gardens earlier this year.
