Vegetable Project

We are a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation organized by parents, teachers and other members of the Albany community. Our mission is to create hands-on learning opportunities for Albany children, and especially children with great needs, by building gardens, growing plants and harnessing the power of exposure to nature.

We connect with kids. We gently encourage getting hands dirty, getting outside when it is freezing cold and broiling hot, and taking chances with unfamiliar tastes. We talk up teaching and learning by doing and touching and tasting and experiencing every chance we get. We do this because we know all of this can make a differences in the lives of kids with great needs.

We lead a weekly Garden Club at Myers Middle School, after school for 10 months of the year and in the evening when school is out for the summer. We plant and nurture and harvest and cook. We partner with Albany's summer youth employment program to offer jobs to teens, typically their first experience in a formal work setting. We mentor at-risk high school students through a paid garden assistant internship. We partner with classroom teachers to create tactile and plant-based instruction. We create in-school tasting events. And we'e working on building an outdoor classroom at our middle school home, to give teachers an irresistable alternative to the staid and traditional passive classroom.