ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — High school students are teaming up and working together four days a week at the St. Pete Youth Farm to help feed their local community.
They hope that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud.
For the past five years, the St. Pete Youth Farm has filled a tremendous need in the South St. Pete community.
“Not everybody has a motor vehicle to drive to your nearest Publix as most people believe, and then they are relying on the corner stores, and at the corner store, the quality of the food isn’t there, the price point is not there, and here we are providing free access to locally grown food,” said Carla Bristol, who is in charge of the farm.
For Bristol and her team of dedicated teens, just giving away food isn’t enough. They want to teach the residents how to grow their own, and that’s where their newest project comes into play—a community-wide compost center.
“Timing couldn’t be more perfect of us getting into that next space of providing to the community this opportunity to compost and then ultimately be able to benefit from the soil we create,” said Bristol.
The compost center was made possible thanks to a $10,000 donation by LocalShops1.
“This will change people’s lives,” said Pat Largo with LocalShops1.
The process is pretty simple. Residents drop off their scraps in a bucket and, in return, receive a bucket of compost to take home to their own gardens.
“We empower the community to have more control over the food that we are eating,” said Bristol. “So better quality food means better health outcomes, less illness, lower medical expenses.”
The students say thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We’ve all learned to dream, and here at the Youth Farm, their dream is becoming a reality.
“I have a dream, right? And I think for us that dream is to be able to share, grow together, and make every step intentional,” said student Jazz Smith.
“What we give, I feel like, is a good thing, and it impacts the community like how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. impacted us,” said student Semaj Stubbins.
“Everybody working together for the betterment of our community, and that, to me, is probably the most purposeful thing in what we do,” said Bristol.
The compost center is expected to be officially up and running by February. For more information, go to www.stpeteyouthfarm.org.
