Green dreams: for these
West Side teens, personal growth
blooms year round
By Lauren Newkirk Maynard; photos by kc kratt
Growing Green Teens at Work.
On snowy Thursday afternoons this winter, James Martin and his twin brother, Charles, didn’t simply come home from school and switch on the TV. Instead, they headed over to 271 Grant Street. At the temporary home of the Massachusetts Avenue Project, a West Side-based community development organization, the boys and a dozen or so other teenagers would switch on the lights in a small makeshift kitchen, fire up some hotplates, and go about preparing a fresh, home-cooked meal for thirty hungry people.

Cooking weeknight suppers might not sound revolutionary, but it is for residents of this neighborhood, especially the teenage members of MAP’s “Growing Green” youth-driven food, agriculture, and training program. Many of them grew up having never seen a fresh vegetable, knowing where cows live, or understanding the concept of “organic.” Most if not all of them live in disadvantaged neighborhoods that, statistically speaking, have had few opportunities for fulfilling work and educational enrichment—not to mention a healthful diet.

Until 2003, that is, when Growing Green sprouted from MAP’s successful urban farm and commercial kitchens. The program shares MAP’s mission to provide the West Side community with better access to food and entrepreneurial job training, but its unique focus is to empower high-risk teenagers who are too often exposed to crime, drugs, and other hard life lessons to experience and share the simple joys of fresh food, hard work, and friends.

Growing Green expanded through the help of a three-year, $265,000 grant from the USDA, recently renewed for another three years last fall despite a devastating 2005 fire that closed MAP’s commercial kitchen. Until a larger space is secured, the hotplates will have to do.

“We’re a team, and it’s fun cooking together—working together,” James says of MAP’s weekly co-op dinners that serve affordable vegetarian meals to the public. They are just one example of the program’s emphasis on safe, accessible food: where it comes from, how it’s produced, and how instrumental it can be in teaching an urban community how to build a healthier, more sustainable world.

“We have high expectations for them, and they know it,” says Erin Sharkey, Growing Green’s outreach coordinator. “Our philosophy is to trust kids to ask questions, and to encourage them to explore their world.”

During the summer, around thirty-five neighborhood youth are paid the New York State minimum wage to farm MAP’s garden lots, where they learn soil remediation, organic farming, composting, and other ecologically sound gardening practices. They also take field trips to local farms and plan to go camping this summer, says Jesse Meeder, Growing Green’s peer education coordinator. “We want them to learn, and to teach others, about the cultural importance of food and nature, how food affects every part of our lives,” he says.

The Martin twins, who grew up with MAP as it evolved, burned down, rebuilt, and launched Growing Green, are joined by team members Barbly Yu-War and Juan Torres.

“We’re not just here to feed ourselves, but other people, too,” says Yu-War, a member of Growing Green’s peer education committee. “We are teaching people that food comes from the Earth, and how to work the soil the right way.”

When the last weeds are pulled, the harvest may be over but the learning process isn’t. Growing Green goes indoors, where kids spend eight to ten hours a week after school learning the economic aspects of producing food. Its community outreach committee plans, markets, and executes such community activities as the first annual Eat Up! youth food conference, held in Buffalo last October, and food-related guerilla theater performances. The peer education committee visits area schools, and Buffalo’s first comprehensive local food access guide was just published to spread the message of healthier living. Winter is also time to prepare MAP’s earth-friendly straw-bale greenhouse for spring planting.

Following the success of its locally famous “Amazing Chili Starter,” Growing Green Works—the completely youth-managed business enterprise arm of Growing Green—is selling and marketing its latest product, Super Duper Salsa, made from organic veggies grown on eight formerly vacant the West Side housing lots. Both products are available at stores like the Lexington Co-op, Ten Thousand Villages, Château Buffalo, and Mom and Pops Market.

“It’s really good, and by buying it, people learn how to keep their dollars local,” says Torres proudly.

Last but not least, MAP received funding to convert a Winnebago RV into the Buffalo Grown Mobile Market—a true “green machine.” This four-wheeled farmer’s market will boost access to fresh food in Buffalo’s neediest neighborhoods by selling local produce and food products (including the chili starter and salsa). Outfitted with solar panels and cork flooring, it will even boast an on-board chef and dietician. This spring it rolls into neighborhoods on the East Side, West Side, and the Fruit Belt, and there are plans to offer lunch service at the Buffalo Medical Campus.

To be sure, Growing Green’s youth entrepreneurs will be behind its success—and many others.

Lauren Newkirk Maynard works for UB News Services. For more information on MAP, see the related story on page 86, and visit www.mass-ave.org. An article on MAP by writer Sandra Firmin appeared in the may/june 2006 issue of Spree.


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