Seattle Youth Garden Works

Apparently there are multiple people that are wondering why I do not post more about my job.  So let's talk about it.  I just finished my second week as the Youth Employment Coordinator at Seattle Youth Garden Works.  It is a market-garden based education and job training program for homeless and under-served youth (aged 14-21) in the University District of Seattle.  It is a pretty amazing agency, please check out the website for more information.  Basically we educate and empower the youth through an urban organic farm and teach them job skills (like resume writing, interviewing, being on time, working with coworkers, etc.).  They also sell all of the produce they grow at one of the farmer's markets and get to split the proceeds.  This also teaches them customer service.  We also come along side them and help/empower them to go to/graduate from school, get into housing, and/or get an ID/Social Security card/Birth Certificate.  Mostly we provide positive adult influence and people who care about them and listen to them and treat them like real people.  My job specifically is to recruit and interview, teach the job skills curriculum, some other paper work, and mainly work with the youth in the garden and form relationships with them.  It is a pretty awesome job!

So far, I have been doing a lot of training.  General training about homelessness, working with youth, and anti-oppression and specific training about where the tools are at the garden, how to set up the youth files, and the process for interviewing.  We have also spent some time preparing for next week, the fall season crew starts on Tuesday.  So getting papers ready for the youth to fill out, reviewing the schedule for the season, making sure the garden is ready.  I also was at the farmer's market today selling the produce that the last season of youth grew.

I am super excited for 'crew' to start on Tuesday!  I am really excited to meet the great youth and start getting to know them.  Training has been excellent and I really have learned a lot and it has made me think about some things.  But I am so ready to get to work in the garden with the youth.  It is going to be awesome.  Probably one of the most fun jobs ever.

As a side note, for confidentiality reasons, I of course will not be able to tell stories of individual youth.  I can share general things about what I did at work and how I am feeling about it, but nothing will be super specific.  So I will at times talk about my job and what I am doing, but it may not be super often, for a few different reasons.  But no worries because there are so many other interesting and exciting and thought provoking things to talk about.