Green Team

Summary

The Green Team is an environmental job corps employing youth ages 14-17 in a full-year urban agriculture, parks assessment and landscaping opportunity.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

Youth summits and community visioning projects have all noted youth employment as a major concern and need in Somerville. The Green Team fills this void by engaging youth in year-round employment at a living wage (in Somerville $9/hour). We not only work in a meaningful experince in the green jobs field, but we also build employment/job skills and do environmental community development in our community.

How will this project solve this problem?

1) Harvesting, maintaining and selling produce from our schoolyard gardens at the local Farmers' Market 2) Assessing parks and playgrounds for potential activity 3) Landscaping with the Housing Authority 4) Visiting National Parks for service work

Potential Long Term Impact

1) Benefitting the green infrastructure of our community 2) Creating a new generation of urban farmers 3) Providing locally grown produce to the Somerville community 4) Imparting new knowledge of job skills on high school students

Project Message

"A highlight was a third grader. See, sometimes when we build these gardens, kids come and ruin them after. But this one time, a third grader stood up for the garden and made them stop."
- Saladin Islam, Former Green Teamer, current Assistant Coordinator

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

Resources