Young food activist looks back on 2009

by Sam Levin, one of three coordinators of Project Sprout. Project Sprout is a student led and inspired onsite garden that supplements food served in the Monument Mountain High School (in Great Barrington, MA).

Exactly 365 days ago I sat down at this same computer and wrote a New Year’s Resolution piece for the Slow Food Blog. I said that my resolution was to inspire six other schools to start organic, student-led gardens. But do you ever tell yourself you’re going to do something, say, run 5 miles, but it’s really not until you stagger back into your house panting and dripping with sweat that you actually believe yourself? I guess I forgot how much can happen in the 8,760 hours that make up a year, because I did not really believe that my resolution would come to fruition.

However, one month after I first made that resolution we traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to speak at the schools there. My friend Luke had put together a video about our project, and we presented it to the public high school and the charter school. Within days after we spoke at the high school, a Facebook group of 90 kids had formed to start a garden. I wasn’t able to make it to the groundbreaking at the charter school that happened a few months later, but apparently the kids were ecstatic.

More after the jump