2020 Virtual Urban Ecology Summer Program
From seedling & produce pickups to virtual beekeeping workshops to Google Meet seminars, SWF’s Urban Ecology Summer Programming reached more than 200 young Chicagoans.
Each summer, Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) welcomes thousands of children, youth, and teens to The Commonwealth, transforming the SWF campus into a vibrant, living, learning, and edible laboratory. From Chicago Architecture Center’s Teen Fellows to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s After School Matters teens, SWF has engaged partners in joint programming and provided tours to summer camps, teen programs, and neighborhood youth, alike through Sweet Water Academy’s Integrated Programs. In 2019, as part of the launch of Sweet Water Academy, the SWF team packaged and refined its offerings into a portfolio of Urban Ecology exposure programs able to reach new audiences and launched Seeding The Future, a new program to engage children at neighborhood elementary schools.
In early 2020, Sweet Water Foundation partnered with One Summer Chicago (OSC) leadership to extend its Urban Ecology offerings to young Chicagoans engaged in OSC’s Chicagobility program. The new Urban Ecology Exposure Program was slated to deliver collaborative programming with OSC’s Chicagobility Program to provide 14 and 15 year-olds day-long, deep dive experiences in Urban Ecology topics via field lessons and hands-on activities at The Commonwealth. SWF began collaborating with two OSC agencies - Phalanx Family Services and Family Matters Chicago - to bring the Urban Ecology Exposure Program to more than 50 youth in summer.
The onset of COVID-19 forced a change of plans, as summer youth programming shifted to virtual and hybrid methods. The SWF team worked with program directors to distribute seedlings to participating youth and then engaged them in a series of online seminars and produce pickups. SWF also quickly developed and launched the Seeding the Future website (beta) to support program participants (and community members & market goers) as they grow their plants. In addition to OSC youth, SWF also provided basil plants to more than 110 teens from an After School Matters culinary program to enrich their experience and introduce them to growing their own herbs.
