By Carrie Strohl | Lead Dirt Girl
Dear Seed Funder,
In 2019, The School Garden Doctor was a newly-incorporated nonprofit organization, not yet well-established in the community. Yet, we knew our Dirt Girls program would capture attention.
Given the most pressing problems facing the world today, we need to close the gender gap in STEM, where women fill only 29% of jobs. School gardens and extended day are both great opportunities to build interest in horticulture and science!
Despite our plans, six months after our first fundraising campaign we were propelled into a pause of epic proportions. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the intent to expand Dirt Girls to more schools. Like everyone else, I pivoted to the online format and launched Dirt Girls Grow Indoors. We shipped 100 houseplants and explored botany through the video screen, trying to maintain connection to nature, ourselves, and each other. In 2022, we offered a small community-wide program at a local high school, but there were some drawbacks.
Five years since our initial campaign, we connected with a local school that agreed to pilot an in-person program. Last spring, we recruited 20 kids to join Dirt Girls. Twelve of those attended 80% of the sessions for a total of 100+ hours of outdoor exploration, social connection, and interest building.
Here’s what we found:
Our findings represent the key components of the Dirt Girls program: cross-age apprenticeship and mentoring, developing an interest or hobby in horticulture, engaging in problem solving and teamwork. In just six weeks, we made seed paper, crafted butterfly puddling stations, and installed a Monarch Waystation.
Dirt Girls was such a success, we offered to support the program all year long, investing not only in the youth who attend, but also the garden educator and growing space on the campus. None of this would have been possible without the ongoing support of the kind donors we have here.
Please continue to watch us grow.
Subscribe to Dirt Girls Diary to receive periodic updates after this final report. To subscribe, clink the link (here or below) or copy and paste the link into a browser: https://schoolgardendoctor.org/dirt-girl-diary/
You can also reach me any time at carrie@schoolgardendoctor.org.
With heartfelt gratitude,
Carrie
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