Growing your own fresh flowers and vegetables in a home garden is a great way to start eating healthy and getting a feeling of physically connecting to Mother Earth. What if you get to do this with our own friends in Chinmaya Mission? This gardening initiative, ideally, would allow kids to be able to grow their own produce throughout the year under the mentorship of an older kid, and see themselves nurture a plant and watch it finally grow into a crop that they can eat, or if the opportunity arises, possibly even sell in a small Chinmaya farmer’s market.
Are you wondering how this is connected to going green as part of Prthvi Seva Initiative. The truth is that food, any food, all food, makes up a substantial part of the amount of greenhouse gasses that any given person creates. In fact, 10.5 percent of all of the greenhouse gases that the US emits come from agriculture. And this is for the crops that the US grows, not including what we ship in. The garden initiative can mitigate this in several ways, the first way being the most obvious. Any food we grow will be that much less bought from stores, but there are other reasons too. Join this group to learn about other benefits and also become an expert in gardening with your friends.
If you are part of Chinmaya Mission Portland and would like to sign up, please click on the mentor or mentee link below. Once you sign up, look for further details coming from 1earth@cmportland.org
Mentees: Elementary and/or Middle school-aged kids who are interested in gardening. Mentees will be added to a group of 2-5 other kids. Each group will have a mentor assigned as group leader and an adult volunteer to help out from start to finish. It’s recommended that each group meet once every week.
Mentor: High school-aged kids who are a bit experienced in gardening or willing to do the necessary research. Mentors can choose to dedicate garden space in their backyard for this activity. When you fill out the form please indicated if you would like to dedicate backyard space. If you don’t have backyard space, you will be assigned another space or assigned to partner with another mentor for this activity.