They say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, and it definitely hasn’t let us down here in Camden. The first few weeks were overcast and rainy and overall just cast a general feeling of “blah” over the work week. This past week has been incredible, though. The sun decided to reintroduce itself to the atmosphere and remind us what it’s rays feel like when they dance all over our faces and soak into our skin. The color green is starting to wake up and so are the people.
It’s March Madness at Urban Promise, which means we get a fresh and energetic stampede of college kids on their spring break rolling through our doors every Monday. This week we’ve got twelve of them at Camp Freedom (my afterschool program in south camden). Yesterday, we took the kids outside to play basketball, frisbee, football, curb ball, and basically to just run free and hang out in a sea of Vitamin D.
Waterfront South, which is the area where our camp is located, is a focal point for a ministry called Heart of Camden. Heart of Camden encompasses a wide range of projects and opportunities for the people within its neighborhood. They run a K-8 school, fix up run down houses and sell them at market value, involve local kids in a ship building museum, work to create a better environmental atmosphere, and have a community garden. Heart of Camden owns the building that we host our afterschool program in.
So while we were playing outside, Andrea, the girl that runs Eve’s Garden – the community garden and greenhouse – invited all our kids over the the garden to plant potatoes. Andrea’s investment in this project over the years has enabled her to hire a few kids from the neighborhood. With that job, they’re learning work ethic, how to live off the land, and how to care for the environment that they live in.
All 30 of our kids headed over to the garden and listened to Andrea explain how to plant potatoes. With kids getting dirty and flinging worms at each other, there was no place I would have rather been. After we finished, Andrea invited us over to her greenhouse where she made french fries in an outdoor bread oven (made by local kids and adults) while everyone explored the greenhouse or sat around talking and laughing and enjoying what life was giving in that moment.
The kids didn’t end up having time to work on homework yesterday, but I think potatoes made for a pretty great trade.
