Today is Monday July 18 and our first stop is Nuestras Raices. They are an organization that works with youth from different parts/zones of Holyoke and the community. Part of what they do is they have the elders and seniors of the community teach the youth how to garden and farm based on experience and knowledge that they have from living in Puerto Rico or other Latin American places. And the youth work very closely with their community to make a change and make their community look better.

Nuestras Raices has a bakery that has been around for 2 years and they sell over 7 varieties of bread at their farmers market. The bakery is open 5 days a week and the bakers are there from 6:00 a.m. in the morning. The name of the bakery is El Jardin Bakery and they bake their bread using an Artisan Brick Oven.

Their main office is next to a Puerto Rican restaurant called La Plaza. We got a tour from one of the youths called Jonathan who as been with this organization since he was 7 years old. He showed us the office and the greenhouse and told us about the background of their organization. On the tour we visited their first community garden that was up the street from the office. After the tour we went for lunch at the restaurant next to their office and ate real authentic Puerto Rican food. We all had a great time eating and talking about the place and how good the food was.

After we had our lunch Eric took us to the big farm, which is next to the Connecticut River. At the land community members have a range of different things that they grow. Some people had chickens and vegetables, others had rabbits, and there was also a little pen that had 3 little pigs and 2 little goats. We got a tour of that land from Eric who told us about the land and how they were trying to buy another 20 acres right next to them and increase their land space.

Then after the tour, all the youths came down, and we spent an hour and a half working on the land. Some of us did weeding, others covered the nature trail with wood chips to make it easier to walk through and others were fixing the chicken house for this season. Then when we finished working, we all played a game called clap lap, which we all enjoyed playing and changing up a little. After that we got ready to lave and said our goodbyes. We planned to stay in contact about events that they are holding or anything else that is interesting.

One thing I enjoyed was working with Jonathan and learning how he feels about working there and making a better decision instead of dropping out of school and doing drugs. Some of the youth said that they feel proud to make a change and break stereotypes such as Latino/a youth only do drugs and make their community look bad.

According to Coralie she says that one major accomplishment that has happened is giving people a chance to make a change in their community in a positive way. A challenge that they have is the desire to do more but not having enough resources to meet that need. Nashlee Pagan, one of the youth leaders, says that she feels important to make a change in her community by doing this. Jonathan Nieves, another youth leader at Nuestras Raices said that they have taught him to make better choices outside of the program and in his neighborhood. William Aponte, the youth director, says that he feels good about himself because he is giving back to his community something that they can benefit from.