Youth Employment Program Resources

There is an ongoing legacy of children and youth education on Sundog farm from the founding farmer and her friends and family to me, the current owner of the farm. In 2016 I purchased this farm and Community Supported Agriculture business from my former 4H leader, so I actually grew up learning and working on this farm. Since then we’ve partnered with many local schools and youth organizations to offer tours, hands-on farm experiences, and agricultural educational opportunities on and off the farm.

One of our long-time partners is the Children of Promise Mentoring Program, which provides a full offering of support for youth with incarcerated or formerly incarcerated parents or personal experience with the criminal justice system. They had been offering a youth employment class in partnership with other programs and employers, so it was a natural extension of our partnership to create an on-farm youth employment program. We recruit youth that participate in Children of Promise programs to apply to  our farm program, conduct a complete job interview process, and then hire the youth as farm employees for 9 weeks. We also hired a teacher with farm experience to help manage the program on the farm, allowing us to collectively offer transportation, workday meals, and fresh vegetables to take home. 

The goal of our curriculum is to have relatively short interactive workshops connecting the participants to the bigger picture and history of food and farming in this country, and to introduce them to concepts that they can learn about and explore further. We envision these workshops as a conversation starter to get everyone thinking, and give us something to talk about while doing farmwork in the field. Many of the youth in our program don’t feel like they thrive in a traditional classroom setting, so it is important that the curriculum we use work for youth with a variety of learning styles and educational and personal backgrounds.