Thanks to You to add to | Lifestyles

When school districts closed their physical doors in 2020, we never imagined that a year later we’d still be navigating a global pandemic. Though our community has faced the same hardships as many around the world — uncertain economic futures, lost learning, lost loved ones, and ruptures to our social fabric we had taken for granted —we have also witnessed resiliency and hope here in Southwest Washington.

Thank you for your on-going support of Lower Columbia School Gardens as we weathered the COVID-19 pandemic alongside you. We would not still be here growing food, creatively reaching families during virtual learning, cooking with you on YouTube, and slowly but surely, working next to students in our gardens again without your help.

LCSG is looking ahead to a brighter future. We are working toward some big and necessary goals that we won’t achieve without you. With two new gardens coming online at Wallace and Lexington elementary schools, and a higher need for LCSG to support student learning, nutrition, and physical and mental health in our community, we need to hire more program staff.

Thanks to immense community support we have 20 school gardens, but without adequate staff who plan and facilitate garden lessons, help teachers get their classes into their garden for science and literacy lessons, mentor middle school students after school, harvest and distribute produce, and cook with kids, we cannot fulfill our mission of truly empowering our community with real food and hands-on learning. Installing and maintaining a garden gets us part of the way, but our garden programs are where we really see kids’ lives changed for the better, and those programs happen because of our incredible staff.