Our time with this internship has brought light to many issues that often aren’t covered within the media, school and general life.
Spark-Y has brought us an immersive experience, from its hands-on activities to its more grounded educational endeavors. It has provided us the opportunity to do many things that many youth can’t experience; such as constructing a produce washing station from the ground-up. Additionally, Spark-Y led us through various enrichment activities, where we learned about water stewardship, aquaponics and horticulture.
Our time with this internship has brought light to many issues that often aren’t covered within the media, school and general life. Before this internship, we never would have known about watersheds, nor some of the impacts that regenerative and sustainable farming has on the environment. Alongside our projects and activities, we went through a multitude of career exercises, gaining professional development skills which in turn aided us in the creation of our main project designs.
One of our projects this summer was designing a culturally relevant garden based on Native American gardening traditions and practices. During this process, we visited the Little Earth Urban Farm, learning about Native American growing practices and the community that lived near the farm.
Through our visit at this garden, we managed to select a few species based on factors like location and companion plants. We designed this garden with the idea that the following summer, a new group of interns will take over the planting and maintenance aspects. This garden will be planted at the WEE Farm, otherwise known as the Wellness and Education for Everyone Farm.
Our other project for the summer was constructing a produce washing station for the same farm.
At first, there were issues concerning the uneven ground and plumbing; though through changes in design and physical labor we were able to both properly level the ground and create a proper plumbing system. We utilized a design that Spark-Y had previously made, but then completely built the station from the ground up ourselves.
All of us gained hands-on experience in ground-leveling, measuring, and wood cutting, as well as the overall building process. This project also taught us how to problem solve and come up with creative solutions to the problems we faced along the way. We are glad we had the opportunity to work with Spark-Y this summer and are eager to utilize the skills we learned here in our future careers!
