The Gloucester Township Family Resource Center and the Kiwanis Club get their hands dirty to create a children’s garden
On Thursday, May 18, the Gloucester Township Family Resource Center and the Kiwanis Club joined with local kids to plant a community children’s garden
It was a good day to get out and play in the dirt for the Gloucester Township Family Resource Center and the Kiwanis Club of Gloucester Township-Blackwood.
They joined with children in the community on Thursday, May 18 to create a children’s garden full of vegetables and flowers at the Family Resource Center. Bill Ebert, vice president of the Kiwanis Club, worked with Michele Selfridge, licensed clinical social worker with the Gloucester Township Police, to bring their organizations together and give back to the community.
Ebert noticed that over the years, the Kiwanis had been doing small things here and there, but it hadn’t culminated to enough in the big picture.
“So, we’ve taken on a signature project, if you will, where we are hoping to sponsor programs here at the Family Resource Center,” Ebert said. “The first of our projects, this year’s kickoff project, is the children’s garden, which we just finished building, today we are going to start planting it — a community garden. This is a ‘let’s see how it goes’ year.”
The Kiwanis Club’s focus internationally is children, so it made sense to Ebert to join with the Family Resource Center.
“Michele has kids that she works with here. There are also lots of community kids that we’re hoping to involve so they can learn about gardening,” Ebert said.
Growing up, Ebert had learned about farming and gardening, but he’s noticed children aren’t learning that today.
“It’s educational, it’s also a way to get kids involved in the community, it’s also a way that in a month or two or three, the community gets some tomatoes and squash,” Ebert said. “We are hoping that some of these kids, maybe in August, they have a pizza party and they use the oregano and the tomatoes and the spices […] that they’ve grown.”
Ebert also envisions the children can scratch their names into pumpkins and watch their own, personal pumpkins grow.
“It’s getting a little bit in touch with nature somehow,” Ebert said. “It’s all brand new ideas, but it’s getting in touch with the neighborhood’s kids and maybe just keeping kids on the right path.”
Selfridge agrees gardening and other outdoor activities are beneficial to the children. The Family Resource Center is part of “GT VISION” — a program through the Gloucester Township Police that promotes community-wide crime prevention efforts. The center provides programs for adolescents and children, juvenile diversion, support groups for parents with addicts, help for kids with depression or anxiety and individual counseling, among many other programs.
A gazebo that will be erected soon was donated by CHOP. It will be dedicated to domestic violence victims.
“I’m going to do outside stuff, [such as] counseling with the kids, just bringing everything into nature,” Ebert said. “Making the mind/body connection with the environment is really important.”
The children’s garden is only one of many ideas that Kiwanis and Family Resource Center have.
The Kiwanis used to sponsor scholarships of about $1,000 for high schoolers to use for their college tuition.
“But now we’re thinking that these scholarships should be more for needy kids in fifth grade or sixth grade, [or] a kid that can’t play Little League because they can’t afford it.,” Ebert said. “[Even] $100, $200 [for] a glove, a bat, a ball, and we’re really keeping this kid off the street, going down the wrong path, and that might be in the long run a whole lot more important.”
Ebert also would like to see an Alice in Wonderland Reading Garden at the Family Resource Center. He said the idea would be similar to other leave a book/take a book libraries, “with kind of an open book cabinet raised off the ground and somebody can just open it up, take a book and go, or drop a book off.”
He also envisions “oversized chairs [that] you can climb up into and sit, […] decorated like Alice in Wonderland theme and you can just curl up in there and read or sit back in the trees and read.” There might be butterfly bushes growing along with books and outdoor chalkboards.
The space will also be a perfect place for outdoor counseling.
“It can be a quiet, peaceful place in nature or it can be a community or a group space to talk,” Ebert said.
