World Wildlife Fund / January 2021
A group of youth employees converged in Lower Price Hill, a Cincinnati neighborhood that is more susceptible to a changing climate, to plant perennial fruit trees and medicinal herbs in what was a vacant lot.
The youth working on this particular project are all residents of Lower Price Hill and attend the neighborhood’s public school, Oyler. The fruit trees, once mature, are meant to help provide the community, a food desert, with access to fresh food at no cost; residents will be able to pluck pawpaws, peaches, and apples while enjoying the green space.
“By planting an orchard, the work provides value to the lot and makes it more interesting and beautiful for the neighborhood,” Sophie Revis, the program’s manager, said. “And we’ll add more trees to Lower Price Hill. As the climate continues to change, Lower Price Hill is poised to get hotter, wetter, and have even worse air quality. By adding these few trees, it’ll help a lot to reduce the heat and make the air better to breathe.”
This work is in collaboration with the Common Orchard Project, a nonprofit that works with The Port Authority to take vacant land, what is often seen as a blight, and reclaim it as a community asset that provides nourishment and beauty…
Groundwork’s Yess said that one of the best parts of the program is seeing where students go after their time with Groundwork is done. One Green-Teamer, now in his early 20s, moved on to run one of their Green Corp Young Adult workforce groups. Other now-adults work in fields such as the forest service.
Of course, not everyone who leaves the Green Team goes on to an environment-adjacent career. But that’s not really the point, Yess said. Rather, it’s that they understand the impact the work has on their communities and how to direct that knowledge into action.