31 August 2024
While some teens thrive in a classroom environment, teen interns from the Market Garden Program at Urban Roots are thriving by getting their hands dirty.
“Sometimes I just wake up and I am more excited for work than school,” said Sakura Vue, a graduate of Johnson High School who interns at the program.
First created in 1969, Urban Roots is a nonprofit organization in St. Paul dedicated to providing youth of the Twin Cities, majority BIPOC and low-income, employment programs that train, educate and empower them through the lens of gardening and cooking.
“What we’re really doing is providing a place for students who have some kind of barrier to employment, to have their first job potentially, and learn job skills,” said Jaclyne Jandro, program director of Market Garden.
The Market Garden Program is one out of the three paid internship programs the organization provides where teens manage their own crop production and receive hands-on curriculum. Urban Roots has 85 interns across the three programs. According to their website, they grow and harvest 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of produce each year.
“One of my favorite parts of the garden is when the supervisors would just like to pick fruit fresh from the dirt and just give it to us to try it,” said Tiara Jamons, a rising senior at Johnson High School who interns at the program
According to Vue and the other interns at Market Garden, they gain essential job skills like building connections and communicating with others. In other job settings they would have to know these skills beforehand, but Market Garden makes it their priority to give teens the skills they need to succeed in life.
“Like no matter what you’re doing there’s always somebody that knows somebody and that always passes on to you,” said Layla Ali, a rising junior at Johnson High School who interns at the program.
Through the management of about 1.5 acres of land across multiple urban gardens and the harvesting of over 50 crop varieties, interns are learning the importance of healthy foods through their exposure to multiple types of vegetables and cultural cuisine.
“Ever since I started working here I feel like I am being or been more conscious of what I’m putting into my body,” Jamons said. Her experience working at Market Garden has also provided an opportunity to try new produce she isn’t normally exposed to.
Located in East St. Paul, Jandro describes the area as a food desert, which is a system of segregation that divides those with access to an abundance of nutritious food and those who have been denied that access due to systemic injustice.
Not having access to healthy food can lead to an increase of health problems like high blood pressure or diabetes, which causes further dependence on the health care system. Market Garden’s goal is to restore the balance of healthy food accessibility and improve community health in the process.
“Food is medicine,” Jandro said, “focusing on food as a form of health care is an extremely effective way of prevention … the impact that we have on interns’ families is significant. Being able to provide the resources and the networking and access to food and also basic needs is important.”
Urban Roots not only cares about providing resources for their interns, but providing resources for their community. Jandro discussed how Urban Roots gives back to their communities by working at local farmers markets, like Mill City Farmers Market in Minneapolis, and donating food to food shelves like CLUES, a Latino-led nonprofit organization. Adult volunteers with Urban Roots also help with gardening while elementary schools bring students to learn about their programs.
“We are about bettering the health of the people we work with and providing resources for the communities around us,” said Jandro.
About this report
This story was produced as part of ThreeSixty Journalism’s Multimedia Storytelling Institute for high school students in partnership with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. ThreeSixty is a nonprofit program dedicated to offering technical, ethical and entrepreneurial training for fulfilling careers in storytelling and civic leadership.
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