Kelly Carlisle didn't start out as a farmer β or a social entrepreneur. After stints in the Navy, the corporate world, and then no job at all, she founded Oakland's Acta Non Verba, an urban garden education project designed to engage and inspire local youth. More than a decade later, her garden β and her vision β continue to grow.
Locations: California. Materials: Plants , Soil. Having adapted quickly and nimbly to the coronavirus crisis, the urban farm education program now serves a larger and geographically broader community than ever before. This story has been updated from the original to include current information. At home, in the car on audiobook, with her daughter, by herself, she consumes these tales whenever she needs refueling. Like right now.
The organization that Carlisle founded and directsβActa Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Projectβis gearing up for the summer, its busiest time of year, and the pressure is mounting. As a kid in East Oakland, Carlisle watched her parents, who were both street vendors, scrape together a living.
In non-pandemic times, local kids aged 5 to 14 come here three days a week during the school year, and five days a week in the summer, to learn how to raise organic produce. That principle is what both calms and energizes Carlisleβnot the transporting quality of the story, but the resonance of its message. I just need the moral. It took being laid off during the recession and having almost nothing for Carlisle to tune in, and allow all the noise, as distressing as it could be, to settle into a coherent message.
A s a kid in East Oakland, Carlisle watched her parents, who were both street vendors, scrape together a living. She regularly rode the train with her father into downtown Oakland, where he sold incense, body oils, T-shirts, cherries, and oranges. Bit by bit, she adjusted.
