Category Archives: Local Programs

A Former Strong Camp Summer Fellow in South Africa

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Rebekah Israel was a Summer Fellow with the Raleigh Strong Camps in the summer of 2012. Since then, she has continued to work on issues related to girls’ empowerment, economic justice, and sustainability. In this entry, Rebekah shares with us her recent experiences in South Africa, where she participated in an alternative break trip that focused on gender equality, youth empowerment, and HIV/AIDS. Read on!

Hello world! My name is Rebekah Israel and I had the honor to work with Full Circles in the summer of 2012. It was an incredible experience and I feel blessed to have met all the girls of the 2012 Strong Camps. Since then, I trekked back to Washington, D.C. where I currently attend graduate school at American University. At American, I spent most of my time this past fall semester planning an alternative break trip that would become instrumental to who I am and what I want to do with my life. Alternative breaks provide students an opportunity to engage in a particular social justice issue either domestically or abroad during one of their breaks from school. “Alt breaks” usually incorporate a service component in which students work on specific project in addition to a learning component that stresses the connection of specific experiences to broader social justice issues.

Kids in the Garden and Community Support

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It’s already been a busy month in Middleton!

Kids in the Garden: We just wrapped-up our first after school program! We had a wonderful five weeks learning about the greenhouse and seed starting, planning dream gardens, preparing the garden for planting, and cooking!

2Showing off their dream gardens

We made many tasty seasonal dishes with the kids including carrot muffins, apple crisp, spinach frittata, and oven fries. Our snack for the last day of the program was 5 weeks in the making: we planted greens in the greenhouse back in April and they were finally big enough to harvest for a tasty salad. We made a home made balsamic vinaigrette dressing and enjoyed the fruits of our labors 🙂 Continue reading →

A Year of Solutions

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This post is by Kwame Ntiri Owusu-Daaku, program leader at Iowa City Summer of Solutions.

I can’t believe I have changed this much in a year. I can’t believe I’ve stayed involved this much for a year either. What started out as a the need to find a summer internship in Iowa City has turned into an amazing journey of discovery from which I’m moving on to a PhD in Geography in which I plan to focus on development and climate change adaptation.

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Kwame learns to caulk a window.

I came to Iowa City in August 2011 to begin a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa. Before then, climate change for me was something Americans and Europeans rambled on about. Coming from Ghana, I was more concerned about social and economic sustainability than environmental protection and preservation. For me then, the tensions inherent in environment versus people and economy saw an obvious winner – I wasn’t about to let people continue to be impoverished while the ground lay fallow. I’ve expanded my thought processes since then and now I have no clear cut solutions. Continue reading →

Full Circles Foundation Spring 2013 Updates!

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FCF Joins One Billions Rising along with other Community Organizations 

On February 15, Full Circles Foundation joined Cirque de Vol for an event celebrating One Billion Rising, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Seventy-five people came together to enjoy a parade/march in downtown Raleigh, speakers and performers, and a local market and non-profit fair. Part of the donations received throughout the day went to support the 2013 Raleigh Strong Camp! One Billion Rising organizer, Grayson Gant, reports that “on the day of and during the event, people were smiling at us, running through the hills of downtown to join us in our march, stomping their feet and honking their horns at us as we marched by. It was beautiful to see Raleigh come alive and I was proud to see they welcomed our approach to sharing love, joy, and our vision for a beautiful and healthy world!” Grayson says she was particularly touched by “two women who had three children with them who joined our march – one lady asked us what we were marching for and I told her – she proceeded to tell me that last month her ex had severely beaten her and broken her nose in several places- we both teared up and we hugged and I told her I was happy she was with us today- they stayed with us for the rest of the march and for the public speaking events that followed on the lawn. It felt very healing, empowering and intense.”

**Many thanks to Cirque de Vol for including FCF Raleigh in this amazing day of empowerment.**

Community members supporting One Billion Rising in Downtown Raleigh!

Community members supporting One Billion Rising in Downtown Raleigh!

Partnership Highlight: Center for Human – Earth Restoration (CHER) and FCF Unite!  Continue reading →

Hope4Green uniting to help restore northeast Detroit

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Northeast Detroit is an area stricken with environmental degradation, illegal dumping, and an unreliable trash management system. Because of this, months of trash and debri starts to pile up in our communities leaving the health and safety of our residents at risk.

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However the team of HOPE4GREEN Detroit is pushing to restore Northeast Detroit with community clean-ups, urban gardening, and boarding up abandoned homes that are open and dangerous.

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Getting Girls in the Know

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Generation Know is a program started by the members of Girls For a Change, a non-profit organization sponsored by U by Kotex. The mission of Girls For a Change and Generation Know is to end the taboo about vaginas and women’s health by empowering girls and getting them to talk. As a society we don’t talk about the vagina, we might occasionally refer to it in a degrading way in a rap song or a movie but we don’t really just talk about what it is and what it needs. 1

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Communities Together for a Better Future – SOS Oakland Summer Camp

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Hello. Today is nearing the end of April. Anahi and Sergio, Program Leaders of SOS Oakland, are working hard on getting everything ready for this year’s summer camp.  “We are very excited for this year’s summer camp. Last year I was part of SOS Oakland and I really enjoyed it,” says Sergio, “Working with kids and with my peers was a very exciting and fun experience. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to return this year not only as a part of it but as a Program Leader.”

SOS Oakland camp gives the opportunity to youth to be a part of the community. They get to work with kids and have the opportunity to obtain the skill of being leaders themselves. This program is quite grabbing, “I heard so many good things about last year’s program from Sergio that it caught my attention. I liked the fact that teens got to work together and collaborate as a team to put together last year’s camp for the kids,” says Anahi. Continue reading →

Improving the Soil

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The ground beneath our feet

East Tennessee red clay soil.

If a person puts a shovel in the ground almost anywhere in the South, like as not, they will bring up red clay soil.  In East Tennessee it is a bright, redish orange and it supports a thriving brick making industry in my hometown.  Show it to a professional grower and you’ll get a strong negative reaction.  Clay is no good, they’ll say.  You’re better off digging it up and buying topsoil, whatever that might cost.  Our soil is dense, easily compacted, often waterlogged and quite acidic.  In the spring, it is cold and boggy.  In the summer, it can bake so hard that roots have no chance to grow through it.

Transforming the native soil into something more friable takes a lot of patience, hard work and respect for natural processes.  It is often worth the effort, as improved clay soil will hold nutrients and moisture far better than its sandy counterpart.  I don’t mean for this blog post to be about the technical aspects of improving soil—I just want you to know more about the ground we are standing on here.

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Greetings from Sunny Minnesota

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Preschoolers everywhere are probably wondering what kind of alleged May flowers are supposed to come out of these April showers.

It’s almost May in Minnesota, and spring is in the air!

…Except maybe for the two massive snow storms we got this week.

It’s sure pretty to look at, but it isn’t quite making for optimal planting conditions. Earlier this year, I mentioned in another solutionaries.net blog post that my joint positions as a Summer of Solutions program leader and a waitress might breed some sort of synergy. As it turns out, Twin Cities SoS will be tending a garden for Gandhi Mahal Fine Indian Cuisine. The restaurant started a pilot garden project last summer, and is expanding this year to include several more plots. Ours will be at the site of the first garden, as pictured in the blog post. Of course at this rate, only time will tell if we’ll just end up growing Thai chili pepper popsicles. Maybe we would be better suited toward a Gandhi Mahal ice fishing venture? Continue reading →