Monday, April 25, 2016

Global Roots new season 2016

Global Roots is an intergenerational gardening program by The Stop Community Food Centre and CultureLink to connect newcomer youth and seniors through activities like gardening, learning about food and food equity issues.

On Apr 25, we started our 2016 season with a blast! 

Having a coffee and snacks and catching up with old friends
We started off the session by welcoming everyone with coffee and fresh baked apple and walnut muffins (recipe from The Stop. Check out other awesome recipes here), followed by a breathing and stretching warm up session led by CultureLink staff, Dora. 

Mass warm-up session before going out into the garden plots


The Chinese senior gardeners weeding and fertilizing, team work!

The seniors for the various cultural gardens couldn't wait to get into it. We planted some bitter gourd seeds in the greenhouse, and everyone got their fingers right into the dirt. We weeded and fertilized, and got the plots ready for seeding and planting of seedlings. 
The Polish seniors love planting flowers

Each season, the participants get to choose what kinds of seeds and plants they want to grow in their gardens. The Polish seniors, for example, love planting flowers, and the Italian seniors love tomatoes. 



The program provides the opportunity for senior and youth newcomers to engage through various ways. The youth help the senior gardener out with some of the heavy lifting, and the youth learn gardening wisdom from some of the seniors who are more experienced gardeners. 

Our growing youth garden participants under the guidance of Gurmeet, our senior volunteer.
Gardening is a great way to socialise. 
It crosses cultural boundaries, breaks language barriers, and bridges generational gaps.

Welcoming newly arrived Canadians from Syria by putting them to work at our youth garden plot.

Have a break! Our dear staff, Dora, offering everyone a drink

Looking forward to the next session! We'll be planting seeds and seedlings in the plots. 
See here for more information

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