YEA Corps has partnered with Street Works, hosted by Emerge and Home Grown of Minneapolis, and will be at the Mill City Farmers Market this Saturday, September 4.  The Street Works youth will be selling produce they raised this summer. They have fabulous collard greens, kale, mustard, squash, red onions, cucumber, lemon balm herbs, green peppers and jalepeno peppers, and several varieties of tomatoes, including ground (a very unique nutty flavor small tomato), red and yellow cherry, green and big boy. Yum!

Carol Lauer nominated YEA Corps for a Connecting With Kids Leadership Award. In her nomination she said, “With Mary Helen’s guidance, the students met with the city council, used all available resources to create a community garden and successfully marketed their produce. In the process, the students gained insight to managing their time, teamwork, organizing and presenting ideas to the city and realizing a goal based on hard work. Mary Helen directed the sight of this group and used her mentoring and marketing skills to guide them to their goal.”

The Chowen Park kids and Mary Helen Franze, Yea Corps’ Executive Director, went to the Leadership breakfast on February 26, where they had the opportunity to meet with business leaders, school leaders, School Board members, the mayor and other civic leaders. Although YEA Corps did not win the award, they were honored to be nominated.

YEA is planning another garden market project for 2010 and we’re looking for project partners. Contact Mary Helen at info@yeacorps.org if you are interested in a partnership. We also plan to be at the Mill City Farmers Market. In addition to the garden project, the compost project is being expanded in 2010 and a new aquaponics project is being developed.

As our first year of operations reporting comes to a close, we wanted to welcome in the New Year by thanking all of our donors, friends, family, and business affiliates whose contributions have supported YEA Corps. We truly thank you for a successful year! YEA Corps has made a great deal of progress in our mission, as we share all of this year’s progress; we hope that you will offer your continuing support. Together through YEA Corps, we empower youth to become engaged participants in their community, experienced entrepreneurs and productive workers.

As an organization, YEA Corps sailed through an involved process of securing our operations and 501 (c)(3) tax status certification. All donations in 2009 are qualified as a charitable write-off for tax purposes. Another organizational highlight for YEA Corps was being selected to have a free website build by Sierrah Bravo. We are so grateful to the team of technology experts that made our website possible: www.yeacorps.com.

This is such a great forum for us to share our projects and latest happenings with our community!
YEA Corps would like to thank Thomson Rueters Corporation who supported us with an additional donation this year. We are also honored by the Minnesota Chapter of Social Venture Partners, which selected YEA Corps to apply for the Minnesota Entrepreneur Cup’s annual competition.

Our organization is so proud of this summer’s Organic Garden Farmers Market project. The Edina Chowen youth group successfully planted an organic garden and sold the produce. Kids involved in the project gained valuable experience: presenting to City Council Park Board, working with local merchants to obtain material donations for their garden, marketing and selling produce at the Mill City Farmers Market and working experience in gardening and sustainable practices. Congratulations to our YEA Corps participants! This fantastic group of kids went on to share their knowledge with the community, developing a “How to Build a Compost” CD and video as well as putting on a composting workshop at the Edina Day of Service/Global Climate Day of Action.

As this year comes to a close and another year of opportunity approaches, we hope you will share in our mission by donating to YEA Corps. Your funding will allow us to expand our program within the community, reaching more youth and partnering with more local merchants. We sincerely thank you for any contributions.

The Yea Corps Summer Project was filled with fun, hard work, and a prolific harvest. The Edina Chowen youth group put up a well demonstrated and executed presentation to Edina’s Park Board and City Council for a small amount of green space for their organic garden in a local park.  The Park Board passed it, but the City Council voted it down, even for the year 2010.  They favor a city wide policy to projects.

The tenacious group of Valley View Middle School 9th graders persisted and planted the garden in the back yard of YEA Corps’ Executive Director.  The kids cut grass, tilled the soil and created an awesome garden landscape plan.  They met with community merchants seeking donated materials to make their garden plan a reality.  Thanks go out to Dave from Edina Hardware, who donated much of the needed garden materials.  Home Depot and Bachman’s donated compost and materials.  Chipotle fed the troops on a hot day in late May as the team planted their 16′x16′ garden.  The garden was planted with tomatoes (5 varieties), peppers, carrots, basil, cilantro, and bush beans that would be sold at the YEA Corps stall at the Mill City Farmers Market.

The youth cared for the garden throughout the summer - weeding, watering and thinning the carrots.  The kids gained an appreciation for farmers and gardeners who grow nutritious food.  They also began to see the value of organic food that is more nutritious and sustainable and has a good price.

In August, the youth focused on business and marketing planning in preparation for selling the product at the farmers market. They found the planning phase to be not as much fun as tending the garden, but a necessary step in a successful business venture!  This required team work and commitment, not easy for 14 year olds during their lazy days of summer.  They did a tremendous job, and their business plan was fabulous with each student owning a different segment of the process according to their interest and talents.  We had a technology committee, a display committee, and a marketing/pricing committee.  The marking/pricing committee enjoyed visiting co-ops and other retailers that sell organic product.

Mother Nature provided us with a very dry and cool beginning to the growing season.  By August, all of the tomatoes were still green!  One of our youth, JP, has an interest in cooking and is quite a fan of the Food Network station.  It was his idea to make fried green tomatoes for sampling at the farmers’ market.  He found a tasty recipe on the Food Network website and spent a day cooking.  The panko breadcrumbs proved to be the key ingredient.  Our intern thought they were so good that he encouraged us to sell them.

Harvest day was exciting in that the carrots would finally be revealed. We had enough green tomatoes, carrots, and basil to have a full table at the market.  The harvest day was filled with hard work and leaders emerged.  Thank you Arin for the assembly station ideas for picking, cleaning and bunching the produce for an attractive sales table.  The youth were quick with ideas on how to lessen the work required.  They found the best tool for washing the dirt off carrots to be tooth brushes.  New of course!  Despite process improvements, they still had a lot of work to do and ended up calling their friends to help.  The harvest day wrapped up with a celebration by a bonfire, making s’mores.

Not much sleep was had by any of us as we gathered the next morning at 5 AM - more appreciation for farmers!  Our stall was very attractive with the beautiful hand painted sign by Lily, fresh flowers and hanging baskets.  The sale was a huge success.  Customers who hailed from the south were thrilled to find our fried green tomatoes.  The youth worked the crowd and demonstrated stellar sales skills. We sold everything!

Luckily September provided us with enough warmth for the peppers to grow and our tomatoes to turn red, so we had another successful sale.

This group created two compost sites next to the garden and made a “How to Create a Compost Bin” video.  They reproduced video on CD for sale.  It is also available on YouTube.   They volunteered and conducted a composting workshop at the Edina Day of Service/Global Climate Day of Action on Oct. 24.

This was an amazing, dedicated group of youth volunteers who learned a great deal while connecting with community partners.  The project leader and YEA Corps’ Executive Director, Mary Helen, was amazed at all their dedication and talents.  She truly felt that every one of the youth grew during the project.  They used their unique talents and learned new skills that will benefit them in their future careers and set the groundwork for them to lead a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.  Mary Helen envisions organic gardens growing in pots in the kids dorm rooms during college and backyard gardens throughout their adult lives.

YEA Corps will be at the Mill City Farmer’s market this Saturday, August 22, from 8 AM - 1 PM.  Check out this link for directions: www.millcityfarmersmarket.org.

We’ll be selling our carrots, basil and green tomatoes.  Recipes will be available and with any luck, we will have yummy green fried tomatoes for sampling!

We will also have the compost CD with beautiful hand painted art work by Lily Mahan.

Hope to see you there!

The Chowen Garden youth are wrapping up their video on Composting to sell. They are doing final edits and producing the DVD. Our Youth artist is finishing a beautiful drawing for the jacket cover.

For the market, the Display committee is gathering baskets, crates, 2x 4s, a couple of chalk boards, and other supplies needed…our sign is finished. Also labels are being created for packaging.

Recipes for our products are being researched and will be available at the market.

We will go through a mock up of our stand and time our set up as we have 10 minutes to unload our trucks on day of market…the kids are NOT looking forward to the 5-6:00 am arrival times the vendors are given for set up. Jobs take commitment of time and hard work, and I am proud to say that these youth have given this and so much more!

We have 4 foot hedges of tomatoes dying for some HOT weather to turn them red. The carrots are our greatest surprise as we have a ton of them!  Basil smells define, and our hybrid peppers are are multiplying every day.  Green beans are gorgeous on the vine.

We continue to be challenged by our unseasonably cool summer but hope to be selling at the Mill City Farmers Market soon…most likely the last two Saturdays in August.  Be sure to check in to find additional locations for our Fall harvest sales.

24 hours is all it took to launch us to the moon. We’re up and running. Thank you so much to our wonderful team of nerds, the Mighty Polymorphin Power Rangers: Extra Awesome dudes. We are eternally indebted to this group of 10 very talented men for building this website in 23 hours and 30 minutes… Way to stay under budget guys.

Sincere gratitude goes out to the team at Sierra Bravo, for offering this amazing opportunity. Mark and Mark, thanks for all you support and belief in the YEA mission.

Thank you to Dan Grigsby, Christine Durand, Robert Stephens, and Chris Wiggins for choosing YEA Corps as one of the extremely lucky nonprofits (1 of 12 chosen out of 48 applicants) to win this opportunity!