Groundwork RVA

Green team through hands-on, people-to-people community engagement, Groundwork Rva' green team is helping teens innovate important strategies to support resilience and health in the city of richmond. 2023 highlights included increased participation in our national park service immersion program. Groundwork Rva was able to send two sets of 8 green team members to yellowstone national park, and grand tetons national park. An exciting addition was that one of the sisters, who had come back a summer leader, joined the gwrva team as a full-time green team educator. This ability to train and "hire from within" is making a huge difference in our community connections abilities. Green team service-learning work continued locally at shenadoah national park on two different trips. An additional highlight for 2023 was green team's continued work on urban agriculture and learning at the hillside mini farm. In addition to the farm producing thousands of pounds of food that was distributed to the community, a focus this year was on the dynamic communities aspect of the space. Green team assisted in the design and installation of a native plant bio-swale, as well as an accessible permeable pathway and learning space. The green team served over 40 youth in 2023.

Bellemeade community bike shop the bellemeade community bike shop is a program of Groundwork Rva that began in 2017 with the goal to bring more access to biking and biking resources, education, and opportunities to the black and brown youth of richmond's southside communities. What started out with the goal of mainly getting youth on bikes has grown into a multi-faceted program that offers youth opportunities to volunteer in their community to earn a bike, participate in bike trips and activities, and have access to free bike repairs, where they also get hands-on instruction on how to fix their own bike. In 2023 the bike shop continued and expanded it's camp spokes program, targeted specifically at young women and gender-nonconforming youth. Experience had shown that these youth really benefitted from this safe space to experience the world of bikes and biking without the competition and "pushiness" that young men can bring. This week-long camp was provided free and with one week serving high schoolers and the 2nd week serving middle-school aged young people. An exciting aspect of 2023's programming was the return of high school participants as stipended bike leaders for the middle school week. The bike shop made over 150 bikes accessible to south richmond young people and their families in 2023.

Green workforce in 2023, Groundwork Rva's green workforce was a full-year, workplace-based workforce training program. Green workforce provided over 6,000 hours of paid work to richmond young adults the youth continued building their skills and training in the safe use of tools and equipment, while learning valuable leadership, critical thinking and project planning and management skills. Green workforce teens designed and installed rain capture systems, and permeable pathways in community gardens and other facilities around the city, to help manage storm water run-off and improve the health of the james river. These young people - showed up every day, collaborated in designing the day's and week's tasks, drove to sites, loaded and unloaded the necessary tools and equipment, used those tools and equipment safely to build, install or maintain elements of the built environment and often managed the volunteers who came to help. Through the green workforce, Groundwork Rva helped prepare youth for careers in carpentry and building trades, landscaping and green infrastructure as well as created opportunities for teens to build skills in financial management. The green workforce's "water-to-thrive," fee-for-service efforts grew in 2023, with water and care being provided to over 300 trees in the city of richmond.