Toronto school gardens led by Indigenous educators

Ontario, Canada

Nonprofit

Green Thumbs Growing Kids works with schools and communities across Toronto to support hands-on learning through gardens, food growing, and outdoor education. The organization empowers young people and communities to develop environmental stewardship and healthy eating habits through engaging garden-based programs and experiential learning opportunities. Our programs run in a cluster of schools from K-12 in the downtown East side of the city, serving about 5,000 people annually in direct service programming. We also provide fee-for-service garden-based learning programs on request across the city, within a one-hour e-bike ride. We are governed by an engaged board of directors, who not only support policies and procedures but also get their hands dirty (soil-ly?) in our regenerative agriculture spaces. We trustee Compost Toronto, which is animating compost education across the city. We've been doing this work for 26 years, and advocate for A Garden In Every School.

Project story

Supporting Indigenous Leadership and Mentorship

Students in our Toronto schools hear a Land Acknowledgement every morning (along with the Canadian national anthem - talk about cognitive dissonance!) yet outdoor education in our largest public school board in Canada is under threat by a provincial government that wants to take us backwards to a settler-colonial mindset. Children and youth are restricted from actually knowing about the land, the agroecology practiced by Indigenous stewards of the land, and the plants and animals that make homes here, whether native or introduced. Our partnership with the school board allows us to reach into classrooms, bring them outdoors, cultivate gardens with them and support teachers to bring these learnings back indoors. School grounds are an amazingly underused resource for land-based learning, and we aim to change that, through advocacy by example. Programs are led by Indigenous educators as much as possible. Support for Indigenous mentorship means that we are not asking for volunteers to do this important work: we can pay them for their time.