On a hill overlooking the southern San Francisco skyline, there is a noticeable humming. The sound intensifies as you get closer to a tucked away corner of this Urban Sprouts school garden. Peer closely and you’ll notice one, then thousands of honeybees pollinating on the native grasses and flowers of this urban neighborhood.
In the past year, this buzz has swept into schoolyards across the nation, as school after school seeks the benefits of school gardens for their own students. Urban Sprouts is poised at the forefront of this wave of excitement. We are ready to share our six years of experience and research-tested results with more students and teachers, who are hungry to grow fresh and healthy food at their own schools.
Today, we invite you to join our circle of supporters and invest in high-impact school gardens. CLICK HERE to make your secure gift today, of $48, $82, or $125. Read on to learn exactly what your gift will achieve!
Whether you are new to the Urban Sprouts community, or have been with us since our beginning, you have likely heard stories of our early days at struggling urban schools. Students carried water buckets out to small garden boxes on top of cracked concrete.
Today, we are rebuilding and expanding our school gardens to include outdoor kitchens, specialized composting facilities, fruit tree orchards, and even a 30-foot greenhouse, helping students to build abundant urban farms on their school campuses. By using professional facilities for cooking and tending baby plants, our students will be more prepared for careers in the green sector than ever before.
As our gardens mature, we too are ready to take the next step. We have seen that Urban Sprouts’ school gardens help students eat better and gain a therapeutic connection to nature and to peers. But, our research shows that school gardens can do much more. They can help turn around failing schools and bring fresh and healthy food into neglected neighborhoods dismissed as food deserts.
However, not just any school garden can transform lives, schools and communities. Urban Sprouts uses a highly-effective model, based on theory and research, that can produce these inspiring results.
With your support, we will not only strengthen and professionalize the school gardens at those San Francisco middle and high schools most in need. We will share our method with youth, families and schools up and down the West Coast.
I’d like to share with you specifically how your gift will make a difference. Your gift of:
• $48 – stocks our new outdoor kitchen with cooking pots, pans and utensils.
• $82 – purchases supplies for our new greenhouse, including seeding trays, soil amendments, thermometers, and hand trowels.
• $125 – enables one teacher or school volunteer to attend our Garden Educators’ Academy training course.
• $250 – covers an irrigation system for our new fruit tree orchard at June Jordan high school.
• $500 – brings one class of students out to the school garden for a day of learning.
I urge you to join me today, by making a gift of $82, $250 or $500—click here to give via our secure website.
Your investment will make a real impact, nourishing young people’s minds and bodies, and helping them to transform their schools and neighborhoods with fresh and healthy food.
Thank you very much!
Here’s a special buzz! All donations of $200 or above received by December 31, 2010 will receive a jar of honey from the Ida B. Wells High School beehive!