Baldwin Center Children "Journey of Growth"
Congratulations to the staff and children of the Baldwin Center in Pontiac, Michigan.
They were the first of 11 Leadership Garden Demonstration Projects to be funded around the country. These projects are designed to demonstrate the Leadership Garden Legacy framework to educate, empower, and engage the leader within each child.
During the spring, a total of forty children between the ages of 5-12 in the Baldwin Center after-school program took part in an eight-week leadership journey using the U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden book, audio, and activity guide. At the completion of the lessons, the students received a $300 Cultivation Grant to create a “Practice Project” using one of the six leader-friendly gardening practices and their newly learned skills. They chose accountability which demonstrates the leader-friendly gardening practice of eliminating blame.
According to youth program director, Ms. Latoya Lundy, “The community of Pontiac is highly impoverished and the Baldwin Center is in the heart of the city where unemployment and homelessness is prevalent. The children are witnesses and often times victims to many of the hardships that have hit the neighborhood. The security, continuity of care, and respect the staff of the Baldwin Center shows to the youth helps them to know that their life does not have to be defined by the environment they are subject to everyday.”
In here lies the first seed for thriving leadership, life does not have to be defined by the environment.
Lundy further stated in their Cultivation Grant application, “The Accountability Project [Journey of Growth] is the tool we are using to have the children experience responsibility and respectfulness for their environment. By the children modeling accountability through cleaning the streets and donating plants, we are hoping to empower the residents to begin to care more for their homes and community environment.”
A second seed for cultivating thriving leadership is to experience leadership through respect for the physical and human environment in which we live.
In preparation for their project, the students created flyers to hand deliver to the residents to inform and invite them to participate in their project.
They held a student t-shirt logo design contest. The winning designs of Annessa Jones, age 10, and Rashad Close, age 12, were combined to make the logo that adorned t-shirts for their June 9th event. Thirty children cleaned the streets on each side of the Baldwin Center picking up all trash and debris from the yards, sidewalks, and streets. They planted flowers in the yards of those neighbors who chose to participate.
What made cleaning streets and planting flowers unique? Young children engaged in leadership with a U.N.I.Q.U.E. purpose and aim to make a difference in their neighborhood environment.
The Baldwin Center "Accountability Project" was a true demonstration of our intent to combine academic learning and practical application that will empower the leader in each child.
To see them in action, click here.
Introduction > Overview > Eligibility > Process > Application
