Green Team Youth Program

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The Groundwork Lawrence Green Team (GT) is a year-round program that offers part-time, paid positions for 52 Lawrence high school aged students each year to help learn about and lead local environmental and healthy community initiatives, grow food, conduct research, raise awareness, challenge their peers to do community service, and participate in hands-on improvement projects throughout the City of Lawrence. The program is intended to promote the protection and restoration of Lawrence’s critical ecological systems, natural resources, and public health by engaging teens in advocacy and project based learning efforts focused on the community's parks, gardens, waterways, and vacant open spaces. The Green Team program has dual goals - to prepare Lawrence’s youth for a lifetime of environmental and healthy community leadership, and to invest in our community’s future and capacity to improve its physical environment. 
 
Our Summer 2021 Green Team has been hard at work, learning and working in five different areas--career skills & job exploration, digital content creation, virtual service learning, park stewardship, and urban farming. Despite the adjustments that needed to be made due to COVID-19, our GT members continue to impress us with their dedication and creativity. Work is taking place both virtually and in person with small cohorts to enhance the safety for all those partipating.
 

Green Team Youth Leader (Full-time, Seasonal)

Groundwork Lawrence (GWL) is seeking individuals with experience in youth development to be responsible for the daily management and supervision of our 2023 Summer Green Team program members. The Green Team Summer program is a 7-week part-time job and leadership for 40 high school students in the city of Lawrence to be an integral part of urban agriculture, environmentalism, stewardship, community engagement initiatives, and service learning. Green Team Youth Leader description here 

 

Green Team Member Summer

GWL is seeking high school-aged young adults from Lawrence, MA to help lead and learn about local environmental and public health issues, conduct research, raise awareness, increase access to fresh food, and participate in hands-on improvement projects throughout the City of Lawrence. The Green Team Summer Program is a 7-week part-time job opportunity for 40 high school students from Lawrence to join one of four cohorts. Green Team Member Summer Position description here

 
 
One of the Summer 2020 GT Cohorts participated in a T-Shirt making workshop led by Fernanda Lopez from the Lawrence Arts House. This service learning project focused on the Black Lives Matter movement. 

 

 


School Year

The school year Green team is made up of 12 Lawrence high school-aged students. The Green Team focuses on various projects throughout the year. They attend various food justice and environmental justice workshops to better understand our urban environment and the effects of climate change and environmental issues on people of color. Additionally, they build professional skills through participation in public speaking events, conference presentations, article writing, and summer green team planning. Throughout all of this, they spend time together on various camping and hiking experiences. Green Team is a support system, a professional stepping stone, and a family.

Check out the final 2019 - 2020 Green Team Virtual Crow project here 

Check out the 2018 - 2019 Columbia Gas response project here: Lawrence Made Pipe Project website

 

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Litzie

Out on Crow Patrol with members of the Green Team from Groundwork Lawrence

The Green Team members will be working on an 8 week Crow Patrol project to observe and monitor the local winter crow roost population. They have been trained in how to use eBird and have completed the new Cornell Lab Bird Academy course on the Hidden Life of Crows. The program coordinator, Yevette Garcia is a doing a great job getting the Green Team memebrs out to the best viewing locations. The students will have conference calls with leading experts including Prof. Kevin McGowan at Cornell and others. Tonight, we met and observed the Crows starting at just after 5PM, at Incinerator Road and then moved to the south side of the Merrimack River for better viewing of final staging locations and the delayed convergence into the overnight communal roost.

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Litzie

Reflection from Groundwork USA Grand Tetons Youth Trip

My Experience going to the Grand Tetons National Park was amazing! Getting the chance to go to Yellowstone, work with the western center for historic preservation on cabin restoration, and meet fellow green team members from Milwaukee and Denver was remarkable. I didn’t expect to see so much wildlife up close. I will never forget my first American bison. Something I will never forget is stargazing during our nights. I have never seen the beauty of our galaxy like I did in the Grand Tetons National Park. If I got the chance to do something like this again, I would do it in a heart beat. Overall, I would never trade this experience for anything. - Litzie

Wilkins

Wilkins Lugo has set a precedent at Groundwork Lawrence for a new career pipeline at the organization. The 23-year-old AmeriCorps VISTA member at Groundwork Lawrence has had a long history with the non-profit before his induction into his current role. He is a green team, and a Groundwork Somerville and Groundwork Lawrence Green Team crew leader, alum. He has advanced his role as a VISTA member at the organization, a role no other Groundwork Lawrence Green Team alumni has done before. He knows that this will open the door for more youths to follow the novel pipeline, one that Wilkins is trying to keep extending!"

He is particularly looking forward to witnessing, and partaking in, the youth development of the Green Team members, and in fostering a zeal for the environment and its related STEM in all of those involved. He is a major advocate of investing into those that have invested in you, and believes he can do just that with his term as a VISTA. He looks forward to the teaching of environmental lessons, conduction of professional development workshops, creating opportunities for leadership development, and a potential check-in farther down the line that one of the youths he worked with is continuing following his footsteps as a VISTA (or as a greater role). As a Lawrence citizen, he has seen how much Groundwork Lawrence has grown, and is excited to see how much Lawrence's youths can grow as a Groundwork Lawrence VISTA! - Wilkins

 

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Jairo, 16, was first introduced to environmentalism through his biology teacher, Rebecca Veilleux. Jairo took the urban ecology class simply because he needed another credit, and the class seemed interesting. Jairo soon discovered that Ms. Veilleux had a lot of experience working on urban ecology projects as she was also a Green Team Youth Leader for Groundwork Lawrence. The class gradually piqued his interest and he thoroughly enjoyed the field studies, especially to Nantucket Island. His teacher appreciated Jairo's enthusiasm and encouraged him to apply for Groundwork as she knew he would like the type of work the Trust was doing.

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Jerver Abrego has learned to think like the land in the Merrimack Valley, appreciate its hidden splendor and harvest its possibilities for restoring lives. The 24-year-old program coordinator for Groundwork Lawrence carried this enthusiasm to Lawrence from Yellowstone National Park, where, for eight days in August, he and five other local young people cleared trails, painted picnic tables and toured natural wonders. The awe he felt standing in the national park, which covers almost 3,500 square miles, inspired him to envision what Lawrence's remaining open spaces might become. He imagined what the valley looked like before industrialization spawned a mill-dominated cityscape in the 19th century, and thought about its restored splendor in smaller spaces.

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Yellowstone National Park


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What's Happening with Green Team

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