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GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. (KMSP) - A Breck High School senior started a community garden in her school and donates the produce. Shivani Nookala was inspired after volunteering at a food shelf her sophomore year.
“My advisor led us through the discussion about why hunger exists and how we could help and how we are currently helping,” she said.
The project is small, but she has big plans -- and like anything in a garden, her idea is growing. Nookala leads a group of ten students and they tend to the garden every day.
“The objective is to garden and donate our produce, but also teach our community the idea about food justice. The idea that not only everyone has the right to food, but a right to adequate and nutritious food,” Nookala said.
So impressive is her initiative that she received the 2015 Prudential Spirit Community Award, which was no surprise to the administrators who work with her.
"Shivani is one in a million what she has done in three years has blown me away," Carey Sirianni, Academic Resource instructor, said.
She took a small garden and inspired a big plan.
“I think this gets at the heart of what it means to be service minded and what it means to be in a community,” Nookala said.
Nookala and other students are now assisting community gardens in other locations and helping the city of Golden Valley start one.