LOVE CULTIVATING SCHOOLYARDS

LOVE CULTIVATING SCHOOLYARDS INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

Our Love Cultivating Schoolyards’ (LCS) paid internship program created opportunities for 36 East Oakland high school students to interact with the natural world through planting seeds, harvesting fruits and vegetables, picking flowers, studying insects, digging in the earth, and composting. LCS interns also learned about food inequity and food justice issues, received leadership and professional development, and led gardening classes for younger students in after-school garden clubs.

As part of our summer programming, Oakland Leaf provided interns with the materials to create home gardens and supported them to cultivate vegetables and medicinal plants and carry out ethnographic and scientific research about the cultural histories and practical uses of each plant.

With our six community school gardens in East Oakland, our direct distribution of fresh, organic produce to families, and now with our interns’ home gardens, Oakland Leaf is combatting the pervasive food insecurity in our communities, and contributing to movements for food, environmental, and social justice.

STEPHANIE

“Gardening can be really calming but it is also so much fun to get your hands in the dirt and to see the seeds grow. And it is so rewarding. The students put all this work and care and intention into the soil and then they get to watch that love grow into living things that they can see and hold and smell and eat. It really means something to them that they have this space that they are responsible for. They don’t really have other experiences like that. I feel so lucky that I get to share my love of plants with the students.”

Cherry Ann Arellanno, LCS Garden Program Instructor

Cherry studied Environmental Science at UC Davis and began working at Oakland Leaf in 2018.

“We are supporting young folks to learn about and connect with all forms of life that make up the natural world. Every day in the program, young people are required to go out and interact with other living things. Our goal is to promote a familiarization with the natural world that will inspire a sense of interconnectedness and, ultimately, a sense of respect for and responsibility to all living things. It is

only when we have fully internalized our connection to other living beings that we can truly care for them.” Matthew Linzner, LCS Founder and Program Manager Matthew studied Agroecology and Community Food Systems at Evergreen State College and began working with Oakland Leaf as an after-school soccer coach in 2006. He founded LCS in collaboration with Ascend School and several former students who would be the first interns to enter the program. LOVE CULTIVATING SCHOOL YARDS

“Growing food is an act of resistance because we are not letting our circumstances determine what we do. We don’t have easy access to organic food in our neighborhoods so we are taking matters into our own hands and growing our own. Growing food is also an act of cultural preservation because our ancestors grew food. And especially how we’re doing it - not mass-producing it - it helps us connect back to our roots”.

Stephanie, LCS Intern 2019-20

‘MUCH LOVE’ FOR OUTGOING STAFF MEMBER JOSÉ LUIS

BY BOARD MEMBER, STEPHEN WALDROD

José Luis Rodriguez is the most thoughtful, considerate, reliable, and unfailingly friendly person I know.

José Luis followed his older sibling, Genesis, into Oakland Leaf when he was in the 8th grade. Now, as a young man, he has graduated from San Jose State University while at the same time continuing to work in ever more important positions in Oakland Leaf. His next step will be law school.

José Luis immigrated to the United States from Mexico with his family at the age of four, settling into a small apartment in the Fruitvale neighborhood along with several uncles. After years of traveling back and forth from Mexico, the entire family successfully relocated in the United States.

By this time, José Luis was working as an intern in Oakland Leaf’s Love Cultivating Schoolyards gardening program. His grandparents had grown food for the family’s survival on the hillside above their home in Mexico, and among his earliest memories José Luis recalls planting vegetables with his mother. As he put it, “My grandparents grew food to survive and we now were growing food for fun.”

Having been raised in a close-knit family with values of helping each other during difficult times, working hard, and staying positive, Oakland Leaf was a natural next step to help him and his siblings successfully navigate the transition to high school and life outside the family.

“We were the first in our family to attend school in the United States. We (he and his brother Genesis) were the pioneers in taking those steps. We made friends with others in the program and little by little the community expanded.”

Speaking about what life was like in high school, José Luis shared, “We would see people being robbed on our way to school. There would be shoot outs at our school, gang violence. We would see that and say, ‘we don’t want to be like that.’ With the gardening work and meeting free spirited people, we could stay involved and stay busy. We didn’t have to worry about getting shot or getting into trouble. It always felt like home, super positive and looking out for each other.”

A major mentoring influence at Oakland Leaf for José Luis was (and is) the Love Cultivating Schoolyards Program Manager, Matthew Linzner. Matthew took his interns on camping trips to the wilderness, snowboarding in the Sierras, and tidepool explorations on the coast, where the youth became more closely bonded and their horizons expanded. As part of the Oakland Leaf program, when college came into view as a possibility, José Luis went on college campus tours, helping him to prepare for another important step in his development.

He stepped into leadership positions in Oakland Leaf while in college. “When I was at San Jose State I would talk with the youth in our programs and encourage them to check it out. I knew they were great students who could do well. They just needed to see it to get themselves motivated. One of the students said, “If José Luis did it, we can all do it. We come from the same neighborhood, the same environment.”

He also helped his interns to develop their curiosity, ask questions, and develop their voices, as Matthew and others had done for him. “Some young people don’t know how to use their voices,” José Luis told me. “Their voices are powerful.” He continues, “We always let them know that we are here to be supportive. The kids find comfort in that. They realize, ‘You’re not here to judge me, but to help me figure my path out.’”

As for José Luis’ future plans, he is aiming toward a career in law, working either in youth or immigration law. “I’ve been helping people grow food and nurturing them, but through law I can actually have a say, or run for Congress, where I can make legislation that changes the system. I want people to feel more comfortable, not to feel like they are foreigners. I want to represent the people who don’t have the voices and who need that support more than everything”.