Veggie Kids bond with nature, neighbors
BONNIE WELLER / Staff Photographer Kalib Lee harvesting vegetables from the garden on 55th Street between Haverford Avenue and Line Street on Thursday. He and other Veggie Kids offer their produce to neighbors in West Philadelphia's Haddington section for $1 a bag.
With the day’s harvest, the youths known as the Veggie Kids travel door-to-door in their West Philadelphia community, hustling sun gold cherry tomatoes, swiss chard, cabbage, and string beans.
On this afternoon, Fallon Hook, a regular customer, buys a bag of tomatoes. A culinary student, Hook, 28, the mother of five, plans to make a salad. But more than a healthy ingredient, the fresh produce represents “something good for the community,” she says. “These kids help a lot around here.”
The Veggie Kids program, in which children 5 to 16 grow, harvest, clean, package, and distribute fresh produce, was piloted in North Philadelphia last year, delivering nearly a thousand pounds of vegetables and fruits to 22 struggling families at no charge.
This season, sponsored by the local nonprofit Urban Tree Connection, the initiative expanded to a community garden in West Philadelphia’s Haddington section, where children offer their harvest to neighbors at $1 a bag.
“Anything to help the children,” says their next customer, Audrey Brown, 80, a widow, holding her newly purchased tomatoes and string beans. “And it’s so convenient. Sometimes it’s hard to get to the store.”
In the Haddington Homes public housing development, most of the 150 families have incomes of less than $10,000 a year, according to Jan Pasek, spokesman for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Only 18 percent of the residents are employed.
So far this year, the kids have harvested almost 500 pounds of produce, serving 23 Haddington families.
via Veggie Kids bond with nature, neighbors | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/08/2009. By Kia Gregory, Inquirer Staff Writer