Migrant Summer School Program

Final report for YENC22-176

YENC22-176 (project overview)
Project Type: Youth Educator
Funds awarded in 2022: $6,000.00
Projected End Date: 01/15/2024
Grant Recipient: El Campito Child Development Center
Region: North Central
State: Indiana
Project Manager:
Andrea Crawford
Email
El Campito Child Development Center
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Project Information

Summary:

El Campito Child Development Center is partnering with the Migrant Regional Services Center to host a summer school for teens. El Campito's garden, named for Concepion Niño, who founded the childcare center 50 years ago to serve the children of migrant farmworkers, will become host site for MRSC's existing summer school program. It will teach regenerative agriculture and community development to the middle and high school students and introduce them to sustainable agriculture careers. We seek funding to provide the teens with stipends to serve as youth counselors in their program. 

Project Objectives:
  1. Teach regenerative principles in land use, food production, and community development.
  2. Introduce youth to farms that are lean, healthy, ecologically diverse, and financially sustainable.
  3. Empower youth to build leadership skills, learn by doing, and share their cultures and experience by acting as counselors for their summer school peers as well as for the El Campito children.
  4. Enliven the garden for El Campito’s children and increase their engagement with it.
  5. Incentivize completion of the MRSC after-school programming and participation in summer school by offering stipends for students who complete the training.  

Cooperators

Click linked name(s) to expand/collapse or show everyone's info
  • Timothy Bayer (Educator)
  • Ben Hartman (Educator)
  • Jonathon Geels (Educator)
  • Theri Niemier (Educator)

Educational & Outreach Activities

1 Curricula, factsheets or educational tools
2 On-farm demonstrations
1 Online trainings
1 Webinars / talks / presentations
1 Workshop field days
1 Other educational activities: We added a series of three days during fall break where the students returned to El Campito and helped the children process the glass gem corn they had grown, nixtamalize it, grind it, and make tortillas for a lunch celebration.

Participation Summary:

2 Farmers/ranchers
30 Youth
3 Parents
9 Educators
7 Other adults
2 Farmers participated
Education/outreach description:

We introduce youth and youth counselors to local regenerative farms and green design landscapers including: Clay Bottom Farm and Troyer Group that are lean, healthy, ecologically diverse, and financially sustainable. We also worked with Good Shepherd Montessori School.

Learning Outcomes

7 Youth reporting change in knowledge, attitudes, skills and/or awareness
Key changes:

  • land use

  • growing and processing healthy food

  • garden and green space design

  • leadership

  • working with children

  • understanding soil, plants, insects and biodiversity

  • sustainable farm business

Results and discussion:

We piloted our program in 2022 and will be presenting highlights at this year's Indiana Small Farms Conference.

Project Outcomes

3 New working collaborations
Increased organizational support to explore and teach sustainable ag:
Yes

Information Products

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Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.