By Carrie Strohl | Lead Dirt Girl
Dear Donor,
At the end of 2021, we received the generous contribution of $386 which pushed us over our $10,000 goal! We’ve continued to fundraise since then, but experimented with other approaches and venues. We did start a new project on GlobalGiving, so head over and check it out.
This time last year, I was preparing to resume in-person programming in partnership with a high school science teacher who was willing to open her garden to us. Believe it or not, schools have pretty strict rules about access, so there are only a handful of schools in Napa that offer gardens for rent for public use (and, as a side note, part of why we maintain liability insurance).
The 2022 Dirt Girl season started April 18th and ran through June 10th of 2022. It was a blast and I learned a lot. One lesson I took away is that it’s tough to run a program on a drop-in basis. Not being able to see the garden day-to-day was different, as was schlepping my supplies to and from the car twice weekly.
Recruitment was also a challenge. As the world got safer, it also got busier. Many people returned to former habits, which meant also resuming out-of-school time programming. Without an already-established presence or dedicated marketing team, we only drew eight kids to sign up. Three families paid the extremely low-cost of $5 per session, but the remaining participants joined us free of charge thanks to your donations.
We engaged one returning student from 2021 and two students from teacher recommendations. We also welcomed our youngest Dirt Girls ever. Three first grade students, all children of school district employees, joined us for the season and one kindergarten sibling joined us on Mondays. One parent, a school counselor, would arrive about 30 minutes late on Friday afternoons, but her daughter would beg to come to the sessions because she loved it.
Some other fortuitous things also came about. Our season was subsidized by a generous contribution of supplies funded by a local chapter of DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). A good friend, and former coworker, also a Dirt Girl donor, can trace her lineage to a patriot in the Revolutionary War (and we've had great discussions about this). I gave a talk, we drank tea, and they made a commitment of $500 above their donation budget to Dirt Girls!!! It was such a treat to be among a group of progressively-minded, historically-grounded women and to be present in real life.
Due to a few personal and logistical challenges, it was late summer before I realized that this funded project would no longer receive reports or updates, so I’m posting this final report with an ask to follow our ongoing progress at Dirt Girl Diary, a blog that lives on The School Garden Doctor’s website. You can find the link below for curated posts since 2016.
We’re still actively pursuing our next Dirt Girl venture, which wouldn’t be possible without your generosity.
Thank you so very much for your ongoing support.
Carrie
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
