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Seeds to Success Community Project

Project Description

Gloucester County's Seeds to Success Project targets at-risk high school age special needs students from the communities of Paulsboro, Glassboro and Woodbury. Seeds to Success is a hands-on business and life skills training program which prepares youth for the workforce through classroom and on-the-job training through youth farmstands. The youth supports local farmers thus making nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables available throughout the local area. Since 2003, more than 500 special needs youth in the three targeted communities have learned innovative ways to become healthy and contributing citizens.

Seed to Success Slideshow

Seed to Success Video

From the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) video magazine, Partners, see how the Seeds to Success food stand teaches New Jersey kids about the business world and the entrepreneurial spirit. To view the video, click on the image below, or go to the page for Partners, Episode 18, and look for the "Seeds to Success" segment.

Why Youth Farmstands?

Seeds to Success addresses a variety of demonstrated needs in Gloucester County: work force preparedness (particularly for special needs youth), improved nutrition/health, life skills development, service learning, community service and economic development. The initial two qualified communities chosen for the project were based on the 2000 Gloucester County Demographics survey. A third site was established in Glassboro during 2005 through the vision and support of local partners.

2005 Grand Opening Glassboro Youth Farmstand.

The communities were anxious to bring fresh locally grown produce to their residents. All three boroughs have initiatives in place to address neighborhood revitalization. Seeds to Success supports local agriculture by creating retail outlets for locally grown agricultural commodities in areas that farmers/growers are not typically able to reach. Seeds to Success accepts vouchers from eligible WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and (FNMP) Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program recipients. USDA provides this benefit to those residents who are at greater risk of medical or nutritional deficiencies due to inadequate diets and are low income.

Although the special needs programs in our county's schools provide workforce preparation to special needs students, there is a significant disparity between the number of youth who require training and the number of hands-on workplace opportunities, particularly entrepreneurial experiences available to those youth.

The project provides hands-on learning and real life application, both proven methods for children to gain workplace readiness and valuable life skills. Special needs youth typically do not receive workplace opportunities where skill development, knowledge and ability reinforcement are so thoroughly emphasized. The definitive goal is to prepare teens to be economically independent as they approach adulthood.

Seeds to Success Project Goals

Provide workforce preparation to teens from Woodbury, Paulsboro and Glassboro
Create retail outlets that bring affordable, nutritious foods to consumers
Teach teens valuable lifeskills
Offer service learning and economic development opportunities for local communities and farmers.

Goal Reaching Activities

Students learn cash register skills.

In the classroom and during the farmstand experience, the youth learn the importance of good nutrition, as well as how to select and prepare agricultural products for use in meal preparation. The same youth learn basic banking procedures and personal financial skills needed not only in their work experience but throughout their adult life. Through the partnership with the schools, qualified youth are recruited to work in the farmstands during the summer season where they have opportunities to acquire workforce readiness skills. Through the youth-run farmstand, the teens learn to handle the many aspects of the day-to-day operations of a retail entrepreneurial enterprise.

Project Impacts

More than 500 special needs youth have been positively impacted by either classroom enrichment and/or summer entrepreneurial work experience.
Documentation shows that the majority of youth have improved their workplace competencies, i.e., working with others and understanding systems.
The retention rate at the farmstands has consistently been at least 86% (estimated to be above the national standard. And, more than 33% of the youth return for more than one season.
More than 11 regional farmers are able to sell produce at a profit, enabling them to continue to farm and prosper with more than $15,000 in fresh produce purchased annually.
Residents in low-income communities have ready access to affordable nutritious food. Senior citizens (FNMP) and young mothers (WIC) have been able to redeem nutrition vouchers (equivalent to an average of 16% of annual farmstand sales.)
Some 60 agencies, organizations, schools and governmental entities have collaborated with the Rutgers Cooperative Research and Extension (RCRE) team to expand and sustain this worthwhile project.

In the classroom segment, more than 400 special needs youth who participated in a four-week financial education program gained money management and workplace readiness skills. The pre and post testing resulted in an average increase of 58% improvement in bank procedure abilities, valuable for both workplace readiness and independent living.
Youth showed their skills in a specially designed "skillathon" both after training and then again after the work experience. Youth demonstrated a significant improvement in the following: ability to make change/process government vouchers, identifying produce and use of a scale/knowledge of equivalent weights.

Above all, the project helps foster citizenship, knowledge and personal development and improved self-esteem and self-confidence in young people so vital as they approach adulthood and for the future of our communities, our country and our world.

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