Healy Heights Transitional Housing Program invites landscapers, gardeners and volunteers to support Healy Heights Transitional Housing program and its children’s garden.
Last year, the OSU-Extension Master Gardener Betty Fowler grew seedlings for the garden while NeighborImpact volunteers and Bend Parks and Recreation members helped the children at Healy Heights ranging from ages 4 to 12, grow plants.
This year, things may be different. There will be no master gardener and Healy Heights has a broken irrigation system. The need is greater. So the community and businesses are invited to help out.
Continuing the program is like a ‘quiet resistance’ right now says Healy Heights Homework Club manager, Jill Christiansen, “Our sources of funding have nearly dried up, yet we still would like to see this program go on. If we could at least sustain the Children’s Garden perhaps through a Children’s ‘Harvest’ Fundraiser in the Fall that brings visibility to what goes on here, maybe we could save the Homework Club as well.”
There is plenty that needs to be done though. The garden’s underground irrigation system needs repair. Seedlings need to be planted and tended in advance. Soil can be tilled. And educational curriculum around gardening, plant, insect, environment and composting ought to be drawn up. So too, must dates be set for the Children’s Harvest event. And invitations made.
Because the Homework Club has been losing funding over the past two years, it is hoped that featuring the children and their harvested plants will engage the community and potential donors in the survival of this important program. If nothing else, Homework Club was provided as a place to go and have an after school snack and be when parents are not around.
Those who would like to help may fill out a volunteer application at www.neighborimpact/volunteers.org.
