The Springfield City School District Family Outreach Connections Department and The Jefferson Street Oasis Community Garden have created a new partnership aimed at providing families with fresh food resources.
The community garden donated a 15x15 garden plot to select families in the District’s ‘Parents as Teachers’ program, as well as the seeds, cages, tools and education classes necessary to equip parents and their children to grow their own gardens.
The community garden, as a whole, includes 80 plots, an area for chickens, a pollinator garden and more.
Families have also learned about the processes of canning and preserving. The goal of the garden aligns with one of the many objectives of the District program: to educate and pull families out of food insecurity. Parents and their children build connections with one another by growing food together and they are able to take home what they grow in the garden.
Through the use of staff called parent educators, ‘Parents as Teachers’ works to improve a family’s economic and health well-being, increase children’s school readiness and success, provide early detection of developmental delays, teach positive parenting practices and connect families to important community services.
