Green Team
Through its education, community service, and job training programs for Lawrence youth, Groundwork Lawrence cultivates respect for the environment, social awareness, and healthy living habits, preparing young people to be future leaders in their community.
The Groundwork Lawrence Green Team (GT) is a year-round program that offers part-time, paid positions for 68 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, farms, 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.
School Year
The school year Green Team is made up of 18 high school students, who are Lawrence residents.
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.
Green Team had the opportunity the last two summers to go to the state house. Youth from Lawrence, MA had an opportunity to gain insight into the state’s functions and operations firsthand. Youth were able to see where policy and change happens within the state house and walking the hallways that people who represent them walk every day. Green Team experience in the state house has given them a new form of inspiration to want to instill change directly in their own community as they do for them in the state level.
One of Green Team highlight projects is the Costello Farm. Costello Farm requires constant dedication to get the farm up and running during the School Year with the help of the Green Team. The follow through of the Summer Green Team has shown how closely both cycles work hand and hand to help our Urban Farm, Costello.
During the school year, students are working on seedlings that will go into the farm, prepping the garden beds, and weeding out undesired plants not needed on the farm to make room for the beauty that summer will unfold.
Summer Green Team continues this work by weeding plants that detract from producing beautiful tomatoes, carrots, eggplants, potatoes, and much more. They are also harvesting produce to donate back to our community through the local soup kitchens and pantries across the city. The Green Team works on this project diligently every year to make sure Costello does better each year, as well as learning about the farm and how they all can do the same in their own backyards and homes.
