Several faculty members at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and members of the North Minneapolis community worked together to create a garden-based experiential education program for youth facing barriers to employment. This program – Growing North Minneapolis (GNM) – recruits, trains, and employs youth (age 14-15) to work in urban gardens located throughout the North Minneapolis community. Especially targeted are youth from low-income families, youth of color, youth from immigrant families, and youth with disabilities. Participating youth work in teams led by undergraduate student mentors from UMN and North Minneapolis gardener mentors.
GNM was designed to develop leadership experience for UMN undergraduate students and to promote food and horticultural skills among urban youth. The program was also designed to advance environmental, social, and racial justice in the North Minneapolis neighborhood, a designated low-resource community in the Minneapolis area. Researchers involved with this study during the summer of 2018 adopted a youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) framework to encourage the five participating teams to initiate investigations into concepts relating to urban agriculture and the natural environment. Each team chose a different project reflecting the interests of the members of the group. Examples of YPAR projects included developing a guidebook on urban gardening and making posters about composting. After completing the GNM program, participating youth were invited to complete a written survey focusing on what they learned throughout the ten-week experience, what they enjoyed the most, and what they found challenging. Data for this study was based on 20 completed surveys.
Survey results showed that what participating youth valued the most for learning across different domains included the YPAR projects, the gardening work, and weekly cooking activities. While most of the learning identified by youth participants related to ''food skills”, other areas of learning included enhanced communication and such social skills as learning to be patient. Gardening and the social aspects of the program were the most frequently mentioned areas of enjoyment. A number of youth also noted “learning new things” as something they enjoyed. Working in the heat and experiencing difficult social interactions were the most common responses to the question about what the youth found most challenging.
The overall results of this study show that youth participants in the urban garden-based program gained basic horticultural knowledge and skills related to food production and preparation. They also benefited from social interactions with other youth, the college-age (“near-peer”) mentors and the adult garden mentors.
Research Partner