Geneseo Girl Scout Builds Community Garden for Low Income Families
Sedonie Scheider from Geneseo, Illinois, has achieved the Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can earn, by building a community garden to provide nutritious food to lower income families.
“With local food banks having wage requirements, families just above the threshold are left in a difficult position,” says Sedonie. “Most meals that lower income families can afford are frozen or premade meals. These meals are unhealthy for long term consumption as it does not provide all the nutrients needed for humans and is also filled with preservatives that are not very good for human consumption.”
Sedonie wanted to provide community members and families with nutritious food options in their time of food insecurity. She came to the conclusion that building a community garden from scratch was a perfect option. After purchasing and collecting supplies, she built garden beds and planted a wide variety of seeds and seedlings.
“The goal of my community garden is to create a space where anyone can come and get fresh vegetables to eat, have a varied diet, and get supplemental nutrients,” says the Gold Award Girl Scout. “In addition to the garden beds, I also provided recipes that can be viewed by scanning a QR code for each of the vegetables.”
Sedonie's determination to help those in need helped her not only plant but also harvest her first round of produce long before her intended deadline. To ensure sustainability, she created a map for crop rotation as well as a binder for future volunteers to use. Through the connections she built throughout the duration of this project, Sedonie was also able to acquire a composter to provide nutrients to future plants, improving the quality of harvested produce.
