This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Kwame Gyamfi at Northeast High School! Gyamfi serves as the CLC School Community Coordinator for Northeast High School where he provides students with the opportunity to build a positive environment where they can explore interests, learn new skills, and build community. As a part of this program, Gyamfi manages the Future Harvest Project which focuses on food and garden related activities.
The Future Harvest Project emphasizes student participation in the food systems of their communities. A core part of this project is the FEWSS garden club where students participate in planning, planting, harvesting, and maintaining the Northeast garden. Gyamfi describes the club as a place for students to learn how to solve problems and take part in active hands-on learning. He feels that it is important for students to be in charge of their projects and lets the students take the lead on every part of the gardening process. Gyamfi hopes that having room to learn and make mistakes will inspire the students to learn more deeply and enthusiastically, building problem solving and storytelling skills they can bring into their lives beyond high school.
"I think kids want to be inspired. I think that they're very savvy nowadays. So with the ability to access information at a much faster rate than in previous times, students don't need you to sit there and try to give them what they can get, they need to be inspired."
Beyond growing food, the garden club has shown measurable improvements in students’ happiness and well-being. A survey asking students to rank how they feel on a scale of 1-5 showed an average of a 20% improvement in student happiness due to the garden club. The garden club not only gets students involved and gardening, but improves their mood and produces a positive impact on mental health.
"We understand that once they may be stressed out, but once they get their hands in the dirt, once they get to enjoying that and let go of whatever it is, it typically benefits the students."
The club operates on a goal-based system, with their target at the end of the year to be selling and giving away their produce as salsa, canned food, or just as is. The students get to take part in planting hydroponics systems indoors, their garden areas outdoors, and they get to take part in the creation of salsa and are working towards canning their produce for other students and their community! Gyamfi emphasizes how the garden is for the community around the school as well. He encourages students and people in the community to come to the garden and take the produce that they want, whether it be watermelons, tomatoes, or even pumpkins!
The FEWSS garden club and the Future Garden Project serve as more than just an activity to fill up time, Gyamfi explained, they represent a legacy.
“It’s just planting seeds, and then so that, as they get older, maybe one of those seeds you planted germinates and grows and turns into something. To me, that’s legacy.”
The Future Harvest Project is a project filled with hope for a better future, stronger and healthier communities, and a legacy that will keep generations of students inspired. Gyamfi’s work in this program, and all others that he has been involved in, has been invaluable in how much it has improved the lives of students, staff, and the local community. We appreciate the support and efforts that many of our CLC School Community Coordinators provide to students across LPS.
