Three years ago, Kennrich Jackson was a shy, soft-spoken boy. Now, he’s a confident 19-year-old with a flair for urban farming.
As a Cleveland South High School sophomore, Jackson applied to the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s
Green Corps Youth and Agriculture Program.
“That was my first interview ever,” Jackson says. “So it was really intimidating.” Still, he was among the nearly 100 accepted.
Jackson has since spent three summers working in Green Corps urban farms in Midtown and Slavic Village, learning how to plant, care for and harvest more than 30 varieties of vegetables, fruits and herbs. The crops are then sold at North Union Farmers Markets and six neighborhood farm stands or turned into salsa that’s also sold.
Located in many of Cleveland’s poorer neighborhoods, the farm stands sell at a 30 to 60 percent discount over the North Union prices and accept WIC and senior vouchers and coupons.
About 20 percent of customers pay with vouchers, a sign that by making healthful food choices more accessible, Green Corps is affecting people’s lives.
“The social issue of hunger in our city won’t go away just because we have this program,” says Shawn Belt, Green Corps farm manager. “But the program works well to have impacts immediately around where the farms are located.”
For example, Green Corps students partnered with the Children’s Hunger Alliance to plant 15 gardens at home day care providers so their children would have access to fresh fruits and vegetables that can be difficult to obtain otherwise.
Jackson and his co-workers are paid minimum wage and work about 20 hours per week in the summer. Last year, they shattered the previous marks for the program by growing more than 10,000 pounds of food and topping $25,000 in sales.
In October 2010, Jackson also traveled to a youth conference to speak about the program with other urban farming groups — something he never would have done before Green Corps. “No one would have been able to hear me even with the mic,” he says.
Green Corps isn’t done yet. It will add a year-round program in 2011 at the Slavic Village, Central and Midtown urban farms where students will study issues such as pollution, prevention, urban ecology and biodiversity.
Jackson, meanwhile, studies law enforcement at Cuyahoga Community College. He’s also become something of a gardening guru. “Now that I’ve been through the program, everyone I know asks me stuff about vegetables,” he says.