Joy from a Cherry Tree

The Little White Bags

So this was back in the early summertime, right when we were still picking pounds and pounds of cherries off of the cherry tree in the middle of the church's garden. We had finished picking cherries off of the tree for the day and had placed a reasonable amount of cherries in little white paper bags for the community to take for free. We had to have placed dozens of those little white backs on the produce stand that sits on the corner of 2nd and Clarke St. My mom, my God brother, and I then set off to run some errands, telling a few people about the free cherries on the garden stand before we took off on our errands. As we were driving back on Martin Luther King Drive, just a few blocks from the garden, we saw a mother and daughter. Both had one of the white bags in their hands and it was so adorable to see the two of them chomping down on the cherries as they talked and laughed together. It was a great chance to see our produce in the hands of a loving mother and daughter pair and knowing that the fruit I just picked from the tree was contributing to their joyful happiness. Seeing that moment immediately became one of the many reasons why I love working in the garden year after year and made me truly realize how impactful a little garden on the corner of a block can really be!

Helpers in the garden, picking cherries

Story submitted by Tara Holty, one of the APC team of youth leaders in the Kids Working to Succeed Program.

Lunch! Fun for the Whole Family

One of the historic components of All Peoples Kids Working to Succeed program has been the bag lunch.  At the end of a morning of KWTS work in the garden, student participants, youth leaders and adult teachers would gather in the church basement or on the church steps and eat lunch together.  Each participant would receive a bag lunch, lovingly prepared by folks from one of All Peoples' partner churches.  At the height of the summer, 30 to 40 kids, youth and adults would eat lunch together, 3 days per week, for 8-10 weeks.  

Yes, that's a lot of lunches, and you might be thinking:  what a daunting task to make and deliver all of those lunches!  However, when many hands from many families from many partner communities each made lunches for a day or two, the bag lunch program was very manageable.  The biggest challenge has always been refrigerator space at the church!

Welcome to the summer of Covid-19, when the Kids Working to Succeed program has been completely re-imagined, including the lunches.  Students participate 3 days per week, with online and home activities and one day per week in the garden.  Recognizing that families depend on KWTS lunches as a source of summer nutrition for their children, program leaders designed a way for families to have 3 lunches per week at home as part of the program.  Each Monday, students come to the church with their grown-up to pick up their KWTS supplies for the online and home activities as well as their Grocery Bag Lunches.

Grocery Bag Lunches consist of provisions for lunch for a family of 5 for 3 days per week.   This summer, there are 12 families with kids in the KWTS program.  At first, partner churches were skeptical about this new lunch model.  Grocery shopping for 12 families for 3 days of lunches for 5 people - that's 180 lunches!  However, if you think about making lunch for 3 days for your family of 5 and needing to grocery shop for that times 12, maybe it doesn't seem quite so daunting.  

Well, with just a little encouragement, the partners accepted the challenge.  Hopefully, they are feeling positive about Grocery Bag Lunches on their end, because by mid-summer, All Peoples is claiming Grocery Bag Lunch a success!  In fact, here are some messages which have come in from KWTS families:

[We received] the best lunches today, 3 bags of food separated into 3 categories, spaghetti and meatballs lunch, sub sandwich lunch, and hot dog lunches with ALL the fixings.  These actually brought tears to my eyes because all of our kids go home with this fabulous stuff!!  Not just a basic bag lunch.  It even excites [my husband].

My son feels proud to bring these lunches home for the family.

These lunches are making something new happen for us.  We are actually making lunch and eating it together.  I like this family time better than the old way.

Partners have been impressively creative, have baked dozens and dozens of homemade cookies, have packed groceries in re-useable bags - it is beautiful!  The love that goes into shopping and organizing is very apparent to the families.

From a logistics perspective, the Grocery Bag Lunch program has been very easy to manage.  If a family has transportation challenges, delivering the Grocery bags to their  home as a porch drop on Monday has worked well.  Keeping the items in bulk packaging has eliminated the trash problem that has sometimes been an issue around the church.  

Maybe you are wondering why Grocery Bag Lunches are a topic in the Harvest Hands Blog.  All Peoples grows food as part of an overall commitment to food justice ministry and increasing food security for families that struggle to put daily bread on the table.  Grocery bag lunches are literally helping our kids to grow as they grow food for their community.  This story is one way in which All Peoples can highlight the ways in which many hands are coming together to do this food justice work and to say thank you.

KWTS small group working in the garden