Garden gives teens a chance and a job
Lawrence Bailey, 17, plants a pepper in the Sunflower Garden in Santa Rosa. Bailey is part of a Social Advocates for Youth program which has given him, with two other teens, a job to get the garden cleaned up and growing vegetables. The fruits and vegetables they grow they take to Catholic Charities to donate for the homeless.
CRISTA JEREMIASON/THE PRESS DEMOCRATPublished: Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 7:44 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 7:44 p.m.
Lawrence Bailey pulled weeds around two long rows of mounded dirt where he hoped the corn kernels he helped plant last week were germinating.
Bailey, 17, knew he needed to get a job when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant, but he said that with no work experience his calls remained unanswered for weeks.
“No matter how good an interview you have, they're just not hiring,” said Bailey, whose job search ended last month when he called Social Advocates for Youth, a countywide youth services nonprofit.
“I was so excited, I haven't had an actual job with a paycheck,” he said as he worked the job that pays him $8 an hour.
The latest U.S. labor report found that 26.4 percent of people between 16 and 19 years old were unemployed in May, compared to 9.7 percent of all working-aged people during that month.
It's hard enough for young people to find employment as they compete for jobs with more educated, more experienced workers. Try getting work without a safe place to live, with a criminal record or, like Bailey, with no high school diploma and a child on the way.
About 70 teenagers are getting their first regular paychecks through the nonprofit's job programs that aim to help young people with significant barriers to employment, such as a criminal record or unstable housing, get a job.
Bailey is among three teens earning money this summer by growing vegetables that they donate to a Catholic Charities kitchen that serves homeless clients. They weed, water and harvest for 16 hours each week, a project funded by the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force in Santa Rosa, said Toni Abraham, youth employment and gang prevention coordinator with Social Advocates for Youth.
“We choose which kids need us the most,” Abraham said. “With us, all you need is a work ethic.”
The teens dubbed their project the “Sunflower Saviors” after the Sunflower Urban Community Garden at Seventh and A streets near downtown where they work. The city said they could revive the garden from a weed-ridden eyesore to tidy beds of flowers, strawberries and other edibles.
Outside the garden gate, Savannah Morales stopped sweeping the sidewalk to pull a dead branch off a bush and toss it into a pile for compost.
Morales had to secure a job before she'd be released from the Sierra Youth Camp, where she served about two years for a felony conviction, but the search was six-months of rejection after rejection, she said.
“It was awful,” Morales said.
Her job hunt ended a few days after she called the nonprofit on a recommendation from a counselor, she said. Now out of camp three weeks and 1.5 years sober, Morales said the work helps her focus on the future and on life without drugs and alcohol.
“Just staying busy,” is the key, said Morales, who said she hopes to someday work on a canine unit for the sheriff's office.
The garden project is a pilot project to determine its value to the teens and whether funds can be raised to employ more youth, said Ellen Bailey, gang prevention services manager with the city's task force.
“It's really difficult for these young people, especially, to find jobs,” Bailey said. “During hard economic times, there are so many qualified people out there. The garden project is a way to put them to work, plus, they're raising food for someone else.”
The group has already brought one batch of lettuce and carrots to the homeless kitchen, said Abigail Minaya, a 17-year-old Maria Carrillo High School graduate who has taken special pride in a tidy strawberry patch she revived from a mess of weeds.
“Nobody was paying attention to them,” said Minaya, who said she grew up on a farm in the Dominican Republic. “They're the first thing I tend to in the morning.”
Minaya, who's currently living in a youth shelter, said she's saving the money for her mother and baby sister, who are living in a different shelter in the city.
The job will help her start a resume, which she hopes will help her transfer from Santa Rosa Junior College to a university. She hopes to apply to medical school someday, she said, wiping her forehead before getting back to pruning an unruly bush.
“I forget everything when I'm here,” Minaya said midway through a recent shift that ended at noon. “I forget my problems, I'm just working. I'll worry after twelve.”
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