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Community Organic Gardening Leadership Internship

Community Organic Gardening Leadership Internship

Our Goal: To provide urban high school students with the opportunity to advance organic gardening and leadership skills enabling them to teach others in the community.

Our Plan: To develop a program where 60 high school students are trained as Community Organic Gardening Leaders (COGL). COGL Interns meet twice per week after regular school hours for two hour hands-on education sessions with guest speakers from universities, agricultural fields and policy fields. 1,000 high school students taught by COGL becoming Gardening Volunteers (GV). GV will provide support to COGL Interns when they present and provide gardening education sessions to middle and elementary school students. COGL Interns and GVs will also work to help initiate school and community gardens at other locations around the community. Undergraduate Nutrition Intern will work with COGL Interns, Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Minnie B. Veal Community Center, YMCA and community members.  Undergraduate Nutrition Intern (UNI), COGL and Garden Volunteers will provide evening educational gardening sessions once per month.  UNI provides weekly nutrition education posts to Twitter, YouTube, website and Facebook. UNI provides weekly instruction sessions with COGL Interns.  

**UPDATE**  Summer 2017 we have 22 high school Community Organic Gardening Leaders (COGL) learning all aspects of the greenhouse and gardening program.  These students meet 2 hours a day for 2 days learning various gardening skills and help maintain the greenhouse with the students in our multiply disabled summer school program. 

 Pictures and COGL gardening data analysis will be coming soon!