Plant the Seeds of Help

There is a refugee family with 5 children moving to our small community in a couple of months. Our Young Philanthropists group would like to help out with the group of private sponsors, and find ways that we can assist the family. We would like to put together educational resources for the children (e.g. backpacks, ESL materials) and find ways to help the family through tutoring, planting a garden, helping learn the culture, foods, etc.

If we can find garden space, we will be purchasing seed and materials to work with the family to plant a garden.
We would also like to help the children at school, and make sure they have all the supplies they need - put together welcome backpacks with supplies and surprises. We would also want to purchase age level ESL materials as they speak Arabic and we don't have any Arabic speakers in our town.

Update (June 16, 2016)

A Syrian refugee family moved to our small community in February. They have five children enrolled in school, from grades preK to gr. 9.

There were two components to our project. First we wanted to make sure the students were welcome at school and had the right supplies. Students donated what they could, such as backpacks, lunchkits and school supplies, and we purchased what we did not get donated. We also purchased new indoor runners for each child, as they only had winter boots to wear.

Update (June 16, 2016)

The second portion of our project was to enable the family to grow some of their own food. They have a small back yard, so we decided to get students to build some garden boxes. We purchased seeds and soil and started some garden vegetables, herbs and flowers in our greenhouse at the Early Middle School. We tended the plants until they were big enough for transplanting.

Students in the high school shops program, including one of the children from the refugee family purchased materials and built two large garden boxes for their back yard. Once built, the students delivered them to the home. A local contractor donated a load of top-soil and with some community help, the family was able to plant vegetables and flowers with the plants we started and other seeds we provided.

The family was thrilled to be able to grow some of their own food, as this is what they are accustomed to in Syria.

Update (June 16, 2016)

Here we are planting the seeds for the greenhouse.

Update (June 16, 2016)

We used the school greenhouse to start the plants.