Teens excel in Lynn’s Food Project program

LYNN – Adesuwa Usuanlele is not a fan of dirt, bugs or the sun, yet she spent the summer happily laboring for the Food Project and is now learning to become a leader in its Academic Youth Program.The Lynn English High School junior along with Tommy O’Connor, a sophomore at Pope John XXIII, had never planted a garden before applying for the Food Project’s Summer Youth Program (SYP), and neither had any idea of what they were in for.”It’s not at all what I thought it would be,” Usuanlele said. “I was not quite sure what to expect but it wasn’t that.””What she said,” O’Connor added. “But it turned out better than I could have hoped for.”The Food Project helps teens and adults from diverse backgrounds build sustainable food systems. The organization operates in Lynn, Gloucester and the Boston area as well as a handful of other communities around the state.As part of the SYP, Usuanlele, 16, and O’Connor, 15, planted, weeded, maintained and harvested gardens for the Food Project.”We were farmers,” O’Connor said simply.But the SYP has a dual goal, explained Jay Harrison, North Shore site director for the Food Project. It also aims to instill “personal change through sustainable agriculture.” Usuanlele said that is exactly what it did for her.”I learned a lot about myself and where my food comes from,” she said.Usuanlele said she learned to watch her words and take people’s feelings into consideration. She also learned to be open-minded which played perfectly into the transition she and O’Connor made from farmhand to farm leader.After wrapping the summer with a family feast that included SYP participants and their families, the pair took a few weeks off before starting the Academic Youth Program, or AYP, the typical next step on the Food Project ladder.Members of the AYP are called DIRT, O’Connor said, which stands for “Dynamic, Intelligent, Responsible Teenagers.” As DIRT, the teens dedicate Saturdays and after school to building raised garden beds in the Highlands and in Gloucester, support the community agriculture program at the Munroe Street garden, and become leaders. It is the latter aspect that went a long way toward teaching the students social and interpersonal skills they didn’t expect.”I’m really good at making eye-contact,” Usuanlele said. “I wasn’t before but it builds up your speaking skills.”Usuanlele said she used to get very nervous about speaking in public and would fidget but now she has much more confidence after leading groups of volunteers on the weekend.Harrison said various college civic, church and corporate groups sign up to volunteer at the Food Project’s area farms on the weekends and the teens lead the volunteers.”I don’t think a lot of people realize that these programs are all teen-led,” he said.Recently, Usuanlele found herself leading a group of college students from Boston College, which she said was both cool and intimidating at the same time.”They were talking a lot and not really working but I didn’t want to be mean,” she said. “I didn’t want them to be mad at me.”O’Connor agreed it has been a little daunting.”I wasn’t very good,” he said sheepishly. “My group didn’t do very well.”However, he is only a few weeks into the program and O’Connor said he is confident that by spring, when he has a chance to become a crew leader with the SYP, he will be ready to meet the challenge.Brianna Iacovetta has been in Usuanlele and O’Connor’s shoes and her job now is to help them make connections with the community and share their skills.”The thing I don’t think people know is that we try and bring together youth from all over the North Shore, not just Lynn,” Harrison said. “We really try to bring together as diverse a group as possible to learn to communicate and to not assume that everyone is like you.”He said Usuanlele and O’Connor and other teens in the AYP will do a lot of public speaking, sometimes in front of crowds as large as 1,500.”It’ a program we’re really trying to grow,” he added. “And we have a lo