Growing, ginger, jobs and justice

While some teens thrive in a classroom environment, teen interns from the Market Garden Program at Urban Roots are thriving by getting their hands dirty.

“Sometimes I just wake up and I am more excited for work than school,” said Sakura Vue, a graduate of Johnson High School who interns at the program.

First created in 1969, Urban Roots is a St. Paul nonprofit dedicated to providing Twin Cities youth — many of them BIPOC and low-income — employment programs that train, educate and empower them through the lens of gardening and cooking.

“What we’re really doing is providing a place for students who have some kind of barrier to employment, to have their first job potentially, and learn job skills,” said Jaclyne Jandro, program director of Market Garden.

The Market Garden program is one of the three paid internship programs the organization provides where teens manage their own crop production and receive hands-on curriculum. Urban Roots has 85 interns across its three programs. According to their website, they grow and harvest around 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of produce each year.

“One of my favorite parts of the garden is when the supervisors would just like to pick fruit fresh from the dirt and just give it to us to try it,” said Tiara Jamons, a senior at Johnson High School who interns at the program

Vue and the other interns at the garden say they’re gaining essential job skills like building connections and communicating with others.

Market Garden manages about 1.5 acres of land in multiple urban gardens and harvests more than 50 crop varieties, which helps interns learn the importance of healthy foods.

“Ever since I started working here, I feel like I am being more conscious of what I’m putting into my body,” Jamons said. Working at Market Garden has also provided an opportunity for her to try new vegetables.

The market, located in East St. Paul, is in what Jandro describes a food desert, which is a system of segregation that divides those with access to an abundance of nutritious food and those who have been denied that access due to systemic injustice.

Not having access to healthy food can lead to health problems like high blood pressure or diabetes which causes further dependence on the healthcare system. Market Garden’s goal is to restore the balance of healthy food accessibility and improve community health in the process.

“Food is medicine,” Jandro said, “focusing on food as a form of health care is an extremely effective way of prevention ... the impact that we have on interns’ families is significant. Being able to provide the resources and the networking and access to food and also basic needs is important.”