Gardening, Art, Growth and Laughter
BY TALIA HANSEL AND AUBREY DONISCH
The Young Leaders Program of The Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts @ St. Paul”'s Lutheran has come to an end for the summer of 2017. The past six weeks have been full of gardening, art, growth and laughter.
The Young Leaders brought the community together at St. Paul”'s annual Block Party””they brought their A-Game and their water conservation knowledge to share. By performing a dance about water, the Young Leaders moved the community in a new way by showing gestures of what water means to them and why Water is Life (Agua es Vida).
A central piece of our work was planting native plants in boulevard gardens. These plants serve two purposes: first, they help attract pollinators. Second, because their roots are deep, they hold more soil, which in turn, helps hold and clean more storm water runoff from the sidewalk. Everything bit of storm water that runs into the storm sewers in our neighborhood goes directly to the Mississippi River, without being treated.
Young Leaders also traveled all over the city to meet with community artists and activists from locations like the All My Relations Gallery to the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization to Walker Art Center (and everywhere in-between).
Like our Boulevard Garden, the Young Leaders have grown strong and have developed in their skills of guidance, kindness, awareness, and advocacy. In the style of our Peace Garden, the Young Leaders have shown more care for their community and more camaraderie among themselves.
The Young Leaders would like to thank everyone they have been able to meet this summer””we had a blast!
Talia Hansel, is Community Ambassador for Young Leaders and Aubrey Donisch, is Youth Program Director
