ASA Learning Garden needs a Pepsi Refresh Grant!

For the last year, we have partnered with The Gleaning Network of Texas to create an After-School Academy Learning Garden. We started the garden after receiving approval from the Dallas Housing Authority to use a fenced in plot of land behind the After-School Academy. We were given approval in June of last year. If you know anything about Texas soil, you know June is not the smartest month to start a garden. But, with the perseverance of Susie Marshall, Executive Director of The Gleaning Network, the garden was under way.

It has taken some time for the kids to get used to the garden. But they have taken ownership of the garden and often beg to go water, dig, look at the worms, or "cook" the compost. You can see the progression of their garden experiences here: http://ourasafamily.blogspot.com/search?q=garden

Here is a past article written on my blog: Education and Focus through the Community Garden

The Gleaning Network has provided their services free gratis for the last year. It takes a lot of time, effort, and research to continue the garden...and we couldn't continue it without their help. (trust me...if you saw my garden at my house, you would understand)

So...please vote for us!! You can vote for other projects as well. You get 10 votes a day. You can use one to also vote for The Gleaning Network. Please vote for us every day! Here is our link:

http://www.refresheverything.com/asagarden

Pass it on!!

Community Crusader Award of 2009

A Community Crusader is a person who creates solutions to a local problem or social issue. This year I feel two people deserve this award: Susie Marshall and Shawn Williams.

Susie Marshall
Though I met Susie several years ago when we took the kids to pick blueberries in Gainesville, TX, I have found Susie to be an extremely dedicated friend to the After-School Academy. She began working with us more consistently during the 2008-2009 school year where she committed to coming once a month to teach the kids gardening lessons. By the end of the school year, Susie was stopping by the ASA randomly and helping out. This summer, she started working more diligently to help develop a community garden within Roseland. Susie stuck with us as DHA wavered back and forth and/or completely ignored our requests to utilize the grassy, fenced-in space behind the ASA.

When the approval finally came, Susie was ready. She had already been teaching the children about gardening. She had been growing little seedlings inside and doing what she could. The approval allowed us to get into the gate and begin plowing up the garden. But Susie ran into another roadblock. The dirt was so hard that it couldn’t even be tilled.

The set back didn’t stop Susie. She researched “lasagna gardening,” gathered a group of teens from the Lake Highlands youth group, and they came out to work with our summer program kids to layer the garden with leaves, soil, and mulch. Shortly thereafter, the garden was planted and things began to grow.

In the fall, Susie continued. Though she is still only “scheduled” to come every other week to the After-School Academy to teach about gardening, she is there at least once a week and sometimes more. She has mentored a few of the kids so that they are now considered “garden apprentices.” Because of Susie, we have seen young gardeners like Ladaysha and Niemen develop.

The partnership is not finished. Mid-semester, Susie started a second garden so that we could have rotating crops. The goal is to eventually get the kids working on their own and to possible rent out plots to neighbors in the community so that they can have their own space to garden.

Shawn Williams
I met Shawn last fall at the Democratic National Convention. Strangely enough, he and his friend, Brian, were walking one way while I, and my friend, Pam, were walking another. As was the nature of the friendliness of the convention, everyone spoke to each other, if only to say, “hi.” It was when I overheard my friend introduce herself to Brian and Brian returned the greeting by saying, “We’re with Dallas South Blog,” that I became very interested. “I read your blog!” I exclaimed. How strange that I should randomly meet people in Denver that I knew about but had never seen when in Dallas.

I found out it was Shawn who actually did the writing on Dallas South’s blog. I was there as a blogger as well. So while I unabashedly threw myself at politicians asking to take pictures of them to post on my blog, Shawn calmly sought out people he noticed and asked for interviews and made some amazing connections. After an amazing week in Denver, Shawn and I returned to our lives in Dallas, but remained friends. That was in August of 2008.

Even though we remained friends, I never expected the phone call I received that asked me first to be on his advisory board, and then moved me to the board of the new endeavor he had decided to start, “Dallas South News.” I was honored to be asked. 1) Because I knew how composed he was when scoping out and interviewing people, 2) I knew how crazy I had looked throwing myself at all of the politicians and was sure he must think I was a nut case, but most of all 3) Because his new endeavor was focused on getting the news to the people, by the people...in the form of citizen journalists.

As Dallas South News developed and continues to develop, Shawn has offered and is very committed to come weekly to our After-School Academy to teach a Junior Reporters class for our 3rd-5th graders. Over a single semester, I have been so impressed with how quickly and easily the kids have picked up interviewing skills, learned how to use the Flip video cameras, and taken to the reporting. Even some of our toughest kids have shown some amazing growth being in the class. I have also been impressed with Shawn’s ability to engage them. I love that he is very methodical (yet very flexible) about his approach and, unlike me, is patient and teaches them one thing at a time, allowing them to grasp skills.

When Shawn first started coming, I would ask, “How did class go?” to which he would reply, “It was all right. They still need a lot of work.” To which I would grow frustrated. I wanted the kids in our After-School Academy to be awesome from day one! Each time I expressed my frustration, Shawn would explain to me, “If they didn’t need work, you and I wouldn’t need to be here. Of course they’re going to need work.”

I so much appreciate Shawn’s attitude. Shawn deserves this award because of his determination to not just expect, but that he is willing to go out and teach and equip a new “crew” of people to be a part of Dallas South. But through our friendship, Shawn has also taught me a lot about being gracious toward people with good intentions. He teaches me patience with the learning curve that some of our kids have been placed on. His patience with my questions and frustrations about our society helps me to see a bigger picture. It is his ability to see that bigger picture that I think is what has allowed Dallas South News to come into existence and what I believe will help Dallas South News to grow into something bigger.

Shameless plug: We need your help to make that dream grow…and to continue to equip more Junior Reporters and Citizen Journalists so that our under-represented communities can become more represented as we move forward. Please consider helping by becoming a $10/month supporter. Sign up here.

Volunteer Spotlight: Susie Marshall

I often get random requests from people wanting to volunteer with our education programs. Usually the requests are very specific. They want to come on a certain day (usually a weekend or an evening after we're closed) and during a certain time frame. Oftentimes, they want to bring a large group of people.

I truly appreciate a person's willingness to give of their time, but I struggle to try to reconcile a group or individual's willingness to give of their time (working around their work schedules) with our actual need. There has got to be some way to engage people in volunteering without making our staff work 50 hours a week to accommodate them. There has also got to be a way to engage volunteers in a way that is beneficial to the program instead of just busy-work that is created because non-profits feel the need to cater to volunteers.

The consistent and genuinely engaged volunteer is very rare and hard to come by but they are possible. We have a couple of them.

Today, I want to spotlight Susie Marshall as one of those people.

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Susie works with the Gleaning Network of Texas. She helped our After-School Academy get their garden started this summer. Her original commitment was to teach a garden/environment class one Friday a month last school year. But she took it upon herself to visit us more than that. Susie would stop by every so--in between meetings or if she was down the street for some reason--often just to say hi or to check out something for the class she was going to be teaching. Because she was so consistent, we convinced her back in the summer to help the kids to start a garden.

Due to different obstacles here and there, we couldn't start the garden when we wanted to. Many people would have stopped coming. But that didn't stop Susie. She kept coming. She hung out. She got to know the kids better. She assisted some teachers and sat in on some classes. She became a part of our program, despite there being "nothing" for her to do.

By the time we got approval for the garden, Susie was ready...because she never went away. Since we were behind in the process, she recruited different people to help. She ran into more obstacles (the ground was too hard). She did more research. She decided on a "lasagna garden." Since the process was too big for small kids, she recruited a group of teenagers to work with the kids.

We could have set aside our project and waited for a volunteer group to come along, but we needed to get the garden going so that vegetables could grow and so that the kids could work in it. And we didn't want it done *by* somebody, we wanted it done *with* the kids. Susie knew all of that and was quick to accommodate--even gathering and purchasing the supplies needed.

Because we had a long time relationship/partnership with Susie, she didn't need a lot of nurturing. We didn't have to provide a staff member to supervise her and her group on a Saturday because she was very familiar with us, the garden, the kids, and our expectations. Susie's volunteering efforts didn't (and don't) take time away from what we spend with the kids, they enhance them.

The garden now has green peppers, red tomatoes, and ripe black-eyed peas and jalepenos. Susie is still researching new practices and has become a part of our summer planning committee. Our After-School Academy is doing some great things with the help of volunteers like Susie.

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If you are someone who wants to be involved, offer your time. Stop in on your lunch break and be willing to enter data or shelve books. Get to know the program's day-to-day activities and needs when kids and big events *aren't* happening. We have to have staff to run our programs like everyone else. Our kids deserve that. But in preparing for our programs, we don't always have time to get the behind-the-scenes things done. Help us with those behind the scenes things...or just show up regularly so that we know we can call on you when we need something. And we need those kinds of volunteers beyond Thanksgiving and Christmas.

After school programs matter

A lot has been happening in Roseland Townhomes this year. At the beginning of the summer, we began working to make the Community Center, Education programs, kids and adult programs, Central Dallas services, and church seamless. Our efforts are working!

We now have a great Parent Academy that meets the third Thursday of every month and focuses on Empowerment, Enrichment, Education, and Employment. We had 11 parents at our first meeting with a powerful presentation from a community organizer on the Rights and Responsibilities of Parents and their interactions with the schools.

Though there is much more that goes on through the Community Center that I can talk about later, my passion is the Education department.

On August 18, the Education department at Roseland was asked to put together programming for a vacant building at Roseland. I had to scramble to get it all in place by September, but as I have figured out through the years, things that are meant to work out always do!

Last Monday we kicked off our programs in Roseland. (yes, that’s with an “s”).



As we have had for 14 years, our After-School Academy (ASA) continues. This year Danielle Evans is leading up the effort and doing a wonderful job. We have three amazing Americorps members--Anna Hart, Phillip Hawkins, and Tameshia Ridge who are helping her manage our 30 kids and numerous classes. The ASA has partnered with Susie Marshall with the Gleaning Network of Texas. She is helping our kids create a fantastic community garden that we are hoping will become a mini-farmer’s market (run by the kids) to the Roseland community. We are also partnering with Shawn Williams of Dallas South News who will be helping our kids become junior reporters, with the hopes/plans of them reporting out on the Dallas South News site in a month or so.

We now have the Roseland Library/Bookstore. It’s run by Katrina Hobbs, Americorps. Katrina is at UTA majoring in Education and has been a part of our programs for 14 years. She’s so excited about beginning to work with kids on their reading. We sell books there for 25 cents for paperbacks and 50 cents for hardbacks. Kids are buying them right and left!

We also have a Teen University run by Terrence Brooks, Americorps. Terrence wants to run his own non-profit one of these days, but I think I might be able to sell him on sticking around for ours once he gets out of school and we can hire a full time person. He’s amazing with the teens. He’s told me some stories of really helping them with their reading and school work and how their resistance is beginning to dwindle. We just received a grant in partnership with UTD that will provide 2-4 college students to work with the teens on homework, college preparation, and career research. We’ve got some great plans!

Finally, we received a grant from One Economy in conjunction with CTIA and Comcast (you may hear about it…they are making a national announcement during the week of Oct. 5). It’s a Digital Connectors program. Tameshia, who also works in our ASA, will be running the program. Tameshia is our “Queen of Technology” and is extremely excited about teaching the teens. The program is for 14-21 year olds and focuses on several skills. Technology is the big focus, but they also has a leadership, financial literacy, and service component. Through the program, the teens will become certified by Cisco Systems to be able to rebuild computers. They will also be creating a mobile app and be creating videos throughout the program. I am so excited we were chosen to be a part of that and can’t wait to see what happens once the group mobilizes and becomes technology point people for the Roseland community.

Whew! So…please! Come visit us!! Great things are happening and I would love to show you what they really look like!

More to come.... :)