A senior at Cedar Falls High School will represent Iowa this month as part of a national program to raise awareness of issues affecting young people. Agatha Fennec will travel to the nation’s capital next week to receive training along with the other winners.
She says she’s honored to receive a $1,000 grant to help her and others create a vegetable garden in a field behind the school. “I’m just really excited because I fell like especially young people need to be very passionate about the environment healthy eating and spread that awareness to younger children, so with the school garden and going into the elementary school classrooms, I feel we will be able do both those things,” Fennec says.
Fennec was awarded the grant after a rigorous application process in a competition sponsored by Youth Services of America. “I talked about the health benefits community benefits and the benefits to having the whole school involved and I created a budget about how I would implement my ideas and that was the application process,” Fennec says.
Associate Principal Troy Becker says Fennec’s project is expected to be used as a capstone for similar gardens at the district’s elementary schools. He says its another example of how fortunate the district is to have such good students and leaders. “Because she did it all this on her own, and she had to have the initiative and drive to make it happen. So we’re very proud of her,” Becker says.
Fennec is one of 51 ambassadors chosen from each state and the District of Columbia. They will till the garden yet this fall and plant cover crops.