Rooted in Urban Agriculture Youth Employment Program
Opportunities for teens to learn and grow
We also offer pathways to cultivate future food systems leaders through our Rooted in Urban Agriculture Youth Employment program. Young people aged 14-18 gain skills, build connections and relationships, and have the opportunity to dig deeper into the aspects of food systems work that most interests them, giving them agency to be active participants in contributing to food justice in their own community.
Youth Employees
We hire several cohorts of Rooted in Urban Agriculture Youth Employees each year who assist Rooted staff at three of our sites: Badger Rock, Madison School Farm, and Troy Kids’ Garden. Our Youth Employees are frequently alumni of our youth programs who choose to return to Rooted and work to support the programs they participated in, creating a pathway for youth that already have a connection with our sites and staff to continue to engage and grow as youth employees once they reach high school.
The program was created in 2018 at our Badger Rock Neighborhood Center site in response to our community’s desire for more employment opportunities for BIPOC youth from underserved communities in Madison, and it has increased in popularity and expanded to serve more youth each year.
The Rooted in Urban Agriculture Youth Employment Program is designed to help youth develop job and life skills, as well as the agency to grow their own food, address racial food disparities, understand food policies and processes, and increase healthy food access in their communities.
We not only want youth to have a means of earning income, but to understand their power in addressing food system-related issues in their own communities and to support them in deepening their experience and skills in the areas of the food system they are most interested in. Rooted staff guide youth through many different aspects of the food system, including agriculture, culinary arts, food justice, and community engagement. Whenever possible, staff follow our youths’ lead to help them gain experience and develop skills around their interests while supporting them in completion of tasks at each site.
Our Youth Employment Program unites all aspects of what we do – providing experiential learning opportunities, cultivating local food, and sharing the fruits of that work back to promote thriving, healthy, intergenerational communities.
