The satisfaction of biting into a ripe red tomato you’ve grown from seed; the knowledge that your actions might sustain another person’s life: these powerful sentiments have become lifelines for the detained young people at the Washtenaw County Youth Center.  Youth Center staff are using a community garden and community service to help make the critical connection between personal accountability and our wider community.

And the impact – for the youth, the staff, and the community - has been enormous.

Lisa Gottlieb, the school social worker with Children’s Services has long been interested in local food, sustainable agriculture and eating seasonally.  She brought that interest to work and the result has been a beautiful courtyard vegetable garden at the Youth Center – all planted and maintained by the youth in the facility.   (See the Children’s Services web site for more pictures of the garden.)

Many of these youth are from urban centers and never really knew where their food came from, and eating fresh food, especially food that you’ve worked to create, was a completely new experience. Any time spent with Gottlieb reflects the kids’ enthusiasm for the project.

“We have lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, beets, broccoli and cauliflower and soon the youth will be able to harvest pumpkins, corn and potatoes.  We created a little fish pond and the fish are healthy and growing.  My goal for next year is to help the kids create a garden in our other courtyard to grow more flowers and possibly peppers and tomatillos to make salsa.”

Another strong connector to community is making choices that will help those who are less fortunate.  Judy Coleman, youth counselor for Children’s Services, understood that many of the youth in custody have never had the opportunity to see, or be acknowledged for their own positive influence in the world.  That’s where a new and innovative initative with the Delonis Center and the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County comes in.

“Through our Rational Behavior Training (RBT) program, detained youth are offered coupons for good behavior at the on-site store. They can buy items like toothpaste, hair products, wash cloths, brushes, deodorant, soap and lotions - all things that can be used by the Delonis Center for people who are homeless,” says Coleman.

Coleman soon put the need to give together with the need in the community and, within a short period of time, these detained youth were using their coupons to help out people who are homeless in Washtenaw County.

Children’s Services’ program manager Lisa Greco is emphatic about the value of this type of programming.  “Any opportunity to help these  youth connect with, and care about the community around them – whether it’s through caring for the land and seeing the potential of a vegetable garden, or realizing the needs of others and the capacity to help – can be so powerful.  The more these young people can learn to care about their community and the people in it, the more likely they are to think through the consequences of their decisions when they’re back in the community again.”