Greetings. My name is tk karakashian tunchez and I, alongside with Armando Salinas, am one of the two FBG Community Outreach Garden Interns who has been working with the garden since early May. Our main focus in the garden has been community engagement, education, and supporting the ongoing work to strengthen community connections to Festival Beach Garden.
As part of our focus on community engagement and community education, my fellow community outreach intern and I began running gardening classes with Camacho and Metz REC centers in June. Our multiple classes run every Monday and Thursday from 8am – 11am. These programs are all free to participants from the Rec Centers. So far, these classes have been a HUGE success. We have been working with about 75 young people, helping them re-engage with their own abilities to be food producers & helping them build healthy relationships with the earth. Our last few classes working with them have been full of brilliant moments, and the kids are so excited to be in the garden. So far, we’ve,
- run a garden & tool orientation with them,
- done a scavenger hunt,
- begun some arts-based work (including making fairy houses!),
- completed a tool-use workshop,
- worked on composting and mulching, and
- even begun to talk about planting with the three sisters.
They’ve shared so many brilliant things with us! They’ve talked about their knowledge of value of compost, understanding of nitrogen, shared what sorts of vegetables they grow (and are culturally important to them), and how, of course, every week they talk about how much they love being in the garden. Infact, one of our young people told us, “I love being here so much, I don’t ever want to leave!!!”
If you would like to support these programs by volunteering to help maintain the plots, making a contribution for supplies, or offering workshops for the youth participants please contact tk at: tikisone@gmail.com.
We will be continuing to work on these classes through the end July. We are also planning on running two other education programs; Health is Wealth- that will center on supporting community wellness through arts engagement and education, and, a workshop on Water Conservation. For updates please continue to check out this blog, or view the FBCG by clicking HERE:
We hope you enjoy the pics above as a preview of some of the work we’ve been doing, including some of our completed fairy houses.
Hope to see all of you in the garden, soon. We are looking forward to a productive and fun summer at Festival Beach Community Garden. Best, tk tunchez (tikisone@gmaill.com) and Armando Salinas (armandosalinas.mando@gmail.com)
