By Amanda Capritto • Photos by Allie Appel
Where there once were hopeless, overgrown plots of land now stand several flourishing community gardens.
And it’s all thanks to some local teens.
About 200 Baton Rouge youths are using their summer to invest in their communities.
Love Our Community is a summer youth employment program sponsored by the office of Mayor-President Kip Holden. The four-week program employs youth from all across the parish in beautification projects, such as the gardens and brightly-colored murals.
Chief Service Officer Kia Bickham has worked on the Love Our Community project since its inception in 2013. For her, there’s nothing better than seeing the participants enjoying their work.
“Our return rate is interestingly high,” Bickham says. “It’s amazing that these kids work so hard in this heat and then keep coming back.”
Each garden began as an adjudicated property, Bickham says. They were overgrown lots plagued with weeds, bugs and trash just waiting to be cleaned up.
Since the program started, Love Our Community has partnered with nearby churches or other community organizations to appropriate the land and build the gardens. Some of the work the students did this year was to maintain established gardens, though other projects started from scratch this summer.
Stephon Washington, a supervisor and third-year participant, says the progress at some of the gardens is astonishing.
“I can’t even describe it,” Washington says. “There was nothing, and now it’s real.”
Washington says the best part of working with Love Our Community is the bonds he creates with the other workers. Second to that comes the satisfaction of looking back on his hard work and knowing he helped someone, somewhere.
Cydni Raby, another third-year participant, equates the program to a summer camp.
“It’s fun. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like we’re working, because we’re here with our friends and we just have a good time,” Raby says.
The Donaldson Garden, at 830 N. 26th St., is brimming with eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, okra and more, but it’s still a work in progress.
A good example of a finished garden is the one on Chestnut Street, Bickham says. Inside, there are rows and rows of beans, melons, squash and peppers along with sky-high sunflowers and growing citrus trees.
Americorps member and community garden coordinator Mitchell Provensal compared the Chestnut Street garden to an urban farm. The garden is open to the public on weekday evenings, and residents are free to harvest as they please.
The student workers also get the opportunity to harvest the produce they grow and learn how to use it with the help of LSU nutritionists.
“It’s really rewarding for them,” Bickham says. “They take what they made themselves and then learn healthy cooking and eating habits. So now it’s not just giving back to the community. They’re gaining skills and habits they’ll use forever.”
For the mural portion of the program, Bickham says they work with the community to identify blighted properties.
“We get permission from the property owners to create a bright spot in some of these distressed areas,” Bickham says. “There’s a lot of places in this city that need a little color.”
Bickham says the program has been a huge success in its three running years. This summer, it received more than 1,000 applications for a mere 200 openings.
Aaron Gross, a first-time employee, says he definitely plans on reapplying to the program next summer and thinks it’s a good way to be productive with his time.
“It teaches you to be involved in your community, and it keeps you busy, but in a good way. It’s nice to think that we’re all out here to help make the place we live better,” Gross says.
The teens are split into seven groups based on several criteria, but Bickham says the most important factor is their home location.
“We like to have them working in an area close to home. That way we’re teaching them that you have to reinvest in your community if you want it to be successful,” Bickham says.
But, she continues, “It’s also important to expose them to the parts of town they haven’t seen before.”
Check out more images from recent work at the community garden:
Locations of community gardens created through the Love Our Community program:
• 1936 Chestnut St.
• 830 N. 26th St.
• 2526 Amarillo St.
• 2742 Jay St., behind the New Life Community Center on Wilbur Street
• 928 Rodin Drive, across from the David Paul Learning Center
