GET STARTED: TRAININGS & SERVICES

“To educate kids about food's role in the environment, and to change the way they eat, you have to engage them in the process of preparing and sharing good, fresh, food.” --Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Foundation

Begin a Garden Program

Fertile Ground can help your school community to plan your school garden, greenhouse, or composting program, and strategize to build partnerships with farmers, businesses, and community groups.

On- site consultations to design and implement garden and farm to school programs;
Strategies to work with volunteers on organizing community events – garden raisings, harvest celebrations, community work days in conjunction with local organizer
Recommending fundraising strategies
Advising on grant proposals
Periodic consultation to troubleshoot and fine tune program

Teacher Training

Fertile Ground offers fee for service training and consultation for teachers and school staff interested in initiating garden programs and developing Massachusetts State Frameworks-integrated curriculum through topics including farms, food, garden, nutrition, local food systems, cultural appreciation and social justice. We work in partnership with several regional organizations.

Student Education

Fertile Ground offers fee for service classroom visits and hands on garden education for all ages on topics such as nutrition and local foods (with taste testing), food preference surveys, soils, composting, food justice, sustainability, in-classroom gardening projects, seed saving, and classroom cooking.

Program Monitoring & Evaluation

When developing programs, we believe that it is necessary that all participants practice evaluation and reflection throughout the duration of a project. Underlying this approach is the belief that for evaluation to create change, it needs to be useful and perceived useful by everyone involved. Methods need to be easy to use, educational, practical, representative of all the perspectives all the participants, and gathered quickly. Our goal is to have all voices heard.

We do this by a variety of methods:

Listening sessions, interviews and interactive focus groups
Interactive Rapid market surveys
Photovoice and video documentation
Participant created surveys

Building Strong Partnerships

Fertile Ground offers assistance with strategic planning, program building, and building volunteer networks. Fertile Ground designs programs to fit the needs of school communities including enlivening volunteer support, galvanizing funding, and building links with urban and rural communities through school gardens. We build small coalitions of community allies to increase access to fresh, local food.

Internships

Become a Fertile Ground intern. College and graduate students interested in garden and farm education, social justice, organizational development, and event planning contact us for more information.