Woodland Youth Council members lead park beautification project
by Lamar Heystek
Coordinator, Woodland Coalition for Youth
When the Woodland Youth Council, a group of two dozen young people working with adults to make positive community changes for youth, was asked how they would spend a $2,500 youth service grant, one member made a passing comment he thought no one would take seriously.
“Why don’t we fix up the park in Knights Landing?” suggested Jaime Cárdenas, a 15-year-old alumnus of Grafton Elementary School, the Woodland Joint Unified School District’s northernmost school site.
The next thing he knew, Cárdenas and a fellow Woodland Youth Council member, 15-year-old Pioneer High School sophomore Crystal Gasca, formed a team to develop a proposal to enhance the recreational area adjacent to Grafton Elementary. They presented it personally to the Grants Advisory Board for Youth, a panel of Sacramento-area peers charged with evaluating similar proposals.
“We were so nervous,” said Cárdenas, “but our work paid off.”
On May 31, more than two dozen Knights Landing youth and their parents joined Cárdenas and Gasca at the Knights Landing park to plant trees, remove graffiti and litter, refurbish the picnic tables, stripe the baseball field and prepare the soccer goal posts for repainting.
“I think the park is a lot safer and cleaner now,” said Cárdenas, who pointed out that the friends of his who participated in the project would be really upset if anything bad happened to their work.
The beautification project would not have been possible without the support of various entities and individuals. Lemuria Nursery in Dixon provided mulberry and pistache trees at a discount. The Woodland Tree Foundation, whose president, David Wilkinson, and board member Rolf Frankenback gave the youth a tree-planting clinic, donated trees and brought the necessary equipment to the planting site. Evergreen Arborists of Woodland provided mulch for free and delivered it to Knights Landing at no cost. Roberto Barajas, the principal of Grafton Elementary, was an enthusiastic supporter of the youth-led project from the start, having helped publicize the event and facilitate communication with school district officials. Most importantly, the youth who descended on the park on a Saturday morning eagerly worked alongside their parents throughout the day without complaint. For their hard work, they were treated to a barbecue lunch prepared by Lina Hernandez of the Knights Landing Family Resource Center and other neighbors. It really was a team effort from start to finish, but we’re most proud of the youth who showed up and took ownership of the park.
“The work is not quite done,” said Cárdenas, who envisions a reconstruction of the baseball field into a regulation diamond. “It’d be really cool to have baseball games out there again.”
The Woodland Youth Council is part of the Woodland Coalition for Youth, a partnership of youth ages 10 to 15 and adults representing various community agencies. The coalition seeks to ensure youth are safe and healthy, have positive relationships with caring adults, have meaningful opportunities to participate in the community and develop the skills they need to be successful. The coalition hopes to bring about these changes through the creation and coordination of a Youth Leadership Center, mentoring programs, policy development, service learning and other youth-led opportunities.
The project was made possible through support from the Grants Advisory Board for Youth, a program of the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, with financial and in-kind support from Sierra Health Foundation.
The Woodland Coalition for Youth is a REACH Community Action coalition.