Global Garden Project

EarthVentures is proud to partner with Character Development of Tampa Bay to launch an exciting after school community program. Global Garden Project™ is a project that will become an adventure of a lifetime as members of the community work together to survive in four unique ecosystems: tropical, arid, agricultural, and wetlands. The well being of each ecosystem-village will depend on how well the participants work together, their critical thinking skills, and how quickly they come to understand the important connections between people and plants.

Designed primarily to help teach children important life skills, Global Garden Project will provide them with a basis for success not only in school, but also throughout their lives. These skills include respect, responsibility, kindness, perseverance, self-discipline, honesty, fairness and pride of one’s self, others at school, and in their community.

The program consists of fifty students grades 4-5 from a Title 1 elementary school who will be specially selected by the school’s administration. The program is designed to provide intergenerational learning opportunities by using community volunteers who are within the senior and young adult demographics.

Each student is assigned a volunteer mentor who has been recruited from USF and other campus volunteer programs and senior volunteers that have been recruited through various volunteer agencies within the community. The students and volunteers are divided into four villages that make up the Global Village™.

Each day, at the start of the program, students and mentors are given a challenge that their village must face. Using the resources provided in their ecosystem, they must try and overcome day-to-day obstacles. They must pull ideas and concepts from their own cultures in developing a new one. For example, they will be determining their own rules and laws of the village, as well as creating their own village holidays. Each day, they will be learning a new way of looking at plants and the role they play in their everyday lives. Eventually, they will find that their own village cannot provide enough resources to overcome its challenges. They must reach outside of their own village and work to negotiate within the traditions and laws of the neighboring villages in order to survive. They learn to share ideas and resources and to function as a multicultural community. This model is then related to their own lives, the community of Tampa Bay and the world in which they live.

Through specially designed projects, the student’s family members will be given the opportunity to participate in the learning process. The Global Garden is a wonderful neutral ground for the economic and culturally diverse members of Tampa Bay’s community to meet and work together. It is our goal to help to make Tampa’s neighborhoods a stronger, better global village.

For additional information, or to find out how you can become involved with the Global Garden Project, please contact EarthVentures at 813-333-1346.


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