As part of the service learning program at Glen Urquhart, eighth graders spent Tuesday morning working with The Food Project. 

The Food Project partnered with Glen Urquhart School in 1991 to use half of GUS's newly renovated, 7,000-square-foot greenhouse. The Food Project has built a national model of engaging young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture. GUS middle school students participate in the Food Project’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Seedlings are started in the GUS greenhouse, grown at Long Hill Farm in Beverly, and distributed through farmers’ markets and hunger relief organizations across the North Shore. Each year over 40,000 pounds of vegetables are grown in the greenhouse, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

GUS students in sixth through eighth grades participate in educational workshops aligned with their grade-level themes. Sixth graders explore the social problems created by how we grow and distribute food. Seventh graders attend a workday on The Food Project Farm, and learn the pros and cons of a global, industrial food system and a local, sustainable food system. Eighth graders attend a workday on the farm and consider how the decisions they make about what they eat impact the world around them.