Agroecology Summer Apprenticeship: A One Summer Chicago Partnership

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In the summer of 2025, in partnership with Alternative School Network, Mama Moore became a One Summer Chicago coordinator– launching our first year of the Agro Ecology Summer Apprenticeship. Since 2011, the City of Chicago’s One Summer Chicago program (now called Chicago Youth Works) allows youth to be compensated for 20 hours of work per week for 6 weeks throughout the summer at a range of businesses and non-profits across the city. 

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Summer apprentices build an outdoor coffee table from a reclaimed cable spool on site.

Through the apprenticeship, we hosted 3 youth– offering opportunities to learn the basics of agroecology, garden site maintenance, community-centered art-making, carpentry, seed-to-table cooking, and event coordination. 

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One of our most rewarding projects throughout the summer was a carpentry workshop where apprentices worked together to construct a reclaimed-materials outdoor coffee table. This project allowed us to utilize scraps from the 8-foot cable spool tables on the back of the site which the team constructed in the summer of 2024.

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Apprentices help prepare spring onions and jackfruit for Karamu Kitchen event.

While nearly doubling the size of our small, volunteer-based team came with challenges, the One Summer Chicago program expanded our capacity as an organization, encouraged us to honor our values of education, collective work, and responsibility, and enriched the experiences of local youth. We look forward to continuing this partnership as our organization evolves!