Cultivating Youth Earth Connections Summer Internship Program (YEC): A Hands-on Environmental Justice Focused Farming Program at the High School Level
Samuel W. Lewis
Scholarship @ Claremont (The Claremont Colleges)
Urban Farm DB summary
In summer 2010, 11 high school students from under-resourced communities in Pomona, Montclair, La Puente, and Chino Hills, California, were paid to participate for six weeks (five days a week, 30 hours a week) in the Youth Earth Connections (YEC) summer internship program, funded by the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace and a Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Project Award. The program was designed to connect movements for food and environmental justice with farming work, and weekly survey responses from interns suggest that experiential urban farming programs at the high school level can connect students with issues of environmentalism and social justice and motivate action against the industrial food system and the environmental injustices they experience.