This summer, I'm working with a local nonprofit to kick off a summer youth program called the "Sweet Potato Project." To be brief, youth will be paid a minimum wage salary over the summer to plant, harvest, process, package and market a product they've developed that was grown in their own community. Think Girl Scout Cookies with an urban, do-for-self twist. The effort includes a cadre of supporters including professors, horticulturalists. Churches, secular organizations, individuals and parents will be asked to commit to buying the products the youth have created. We're also reaching out to neighborhood stores and, hopefully, a chain store that will agree to sell the sweet potato pies, cookies or whatever related product the kids come up with.
This is just one small effort but the hope is to plant the seed in the minds of at-risk youth that they do have ways to generate money other than illegal drug sales. We're also hoping to spur community engagement around the idea that vibrant economic activity can once again return to minority communities.
Today, a small group of St. Louis students will create and market their own product. Tomorrow, who knows, food may be grown right out of long-ignored disadvantaged neighborhoods, packaged, canned and distributed regionally and all over the country. Jobs and small businesses, like grocery stores, bakeries and coffee shops can be the spin-off results of these community-based endeavors.
It's
a hope, a start. It's an invitation for diverse hearts and minds to come back home. It's
a chance to build communities of opportunity where children can engage with a caring adults. It can be the dawn of a the day when kids can walk to school
with pride in tack and imaginations ignited.
Sylvester
Brown, Jr. is a St. Louis, MO-based writer and founder of When We Dream
Together, a nonprofit dedicated to urban revitalization.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
