Depave

One of the coolest things about homeschooling is the opportunity it gives families to really think about what they believe constitutes a good education.  Beyond just reading, writing, and arithmetic, how do you prioritize how you spend your precious time? What things do you value most?  One family in our homeschool group prioritizes service learning.  Among other things, they participate in Depave events, and they invited the group along to one of them.

Depave is a local volunteer organization that removes asphalt for the purpose of reclaiming the land for community gardens.  Today's event was for the purpose of removing 7,200 square feet of asphalt to double the size of an existing community garden.   We wandered through the spectacular garden before the project began,  and saw what a truly worthwhile project we were taking on.    The asphalt had already been cut into a grid pattern with a circular saw, and volunteers spent about 4 hours lifting up the asphalt with pry bars, loading it onto wheelbarrows by hand and with shovels, and dumping it into dumpsters for recycling.  People of all ages can, and did, participate, and even the youngest kids could help out.  Many people were there for the whole project, but others came and lent a hand for less time and still made a big difference.  They supplied gloves, safety goggles, and dust masks, but for next time I'll want some gardening gloves just for Jasper since they were all adult sizes.  He helped out for a while, and observed all the activity, and spent the rest of the time thoroughly enjoying looking at all the wonderful plants, which are currently his passion.

Depave is still planning their next event for the fall, and a date has not yet been set.  More about Depave here:   http://depave.org/