New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'
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Urban farm gives Martindale-Brightwood teens job skills, income and family

Gardening became a beloved hobby for Davis, but growing up seeing drug addiction so prevalent in her neighborhood pushed her to study pharmaceutical sciences at Purdue.

By Clare Proctor
Indianapolis Star
July 8 2021

Excerpt:

Naomi Davis cried the day her aunt dropped her off at an urban farm in Martindale-Brightwood during the summer of 2014.

The then-12-year-old wanted nothing to do with the farm and wouldn’t have gone if her aunt hadn’t made her.

Seven years later, Davis, 19, is running the entire urban farm program at the Felege Hiywot Center.

“Coming here, it’s fully like a family,” Davis said. “Even people from six years ago, we all still talk. I consider them my brothers, my cousins.”

The Felege Hiywot Center, a nonprofit whose name means “looking for direction in life,” employs middle and high school students to tend to the urban farm in the mornings and attend science seminars in the afternoons. Multiple greenhouse tents mark the center’s presence on Sheldon Street.

Read the complete article here.