July 2009:
There was a surprise ending to last Wednesday night’s free screening of Fresh, an eco-food documentary that was shown at Roaring Fork High School to benefit the Edible Schoolyard and Community Greenhouse project. Longtime children’s activist and local mother Illène Pevec believed that she was standing in front of the audience to say goodnight to everyone who had attended the event, but instead, Ilène was honored with the Sopris Mothers Acting Up 2009 Mother of the Year Award, presented by her daughter, co-founder of Sopris MAU, Adriana Pevec Brown. The Mother of the Year Award came with a $400 check for the Edible Schoolyard and Community Greenhouse project, along with a pledge of hands-on support when the garden is being planted.
“You have always inspired me,” Brown said, when presenting the award. “And now your work has inspired a community of young mothers who are seeking a way to create a better world for our children. You lead by example, and you give with all of your heart.”
Pevec is driven by her passion for nurturing and protecting the world’s children. Her career as an art educator in Vancouver lead her to working to address an enormous amount of social inequality she saw within the Canadian school system, where Pevec explains that “parents in wealthy school districts had the luxury of time for activism and so were able to enrich their schools through cultural programs, while the parents in poorer neighborhoods could not, and so there was an appalling disparity between the schools on many levels, from safety to cultural programs, or lack therof.” The solution that Illène created is the “Spirit of Nature Garden” in inner-city Vancouver, where numerous acres have been converted into gardens that combine opportunities for fine arts, gardening and cooking for school children.
“When you nurture the soil, you nurture yourself,” Illène said, explaining why it is so vitally important to her that we begin to create healthier outdoor, natural learning environments for children that include foods, so that “children learn how to care for themselves and the environment at the same time.”
A native of Brazil, she next took her vision to the streets of Santo Angelo, where she built community gardens that are funded through an innovative “Women’s Purse Project” in which beautiful one-of-a-kind handbags are made by young women using recycled soda can tops, and are then sold to purchase supplies and to pay college tuition for two young women who are running the garden, teaching youngsters how to farm, while providing fresh produce for their community.
The Roaring Fork High School’s Edible Schoolyard and Community Greenhouse project is Illène’s latest passion. Modeled after a groundbreaking school lunch program founded by Berkley, California chef Alice Waters, the local schoolyard garden is underway as a shared effort between community members, local parents, and several area non-profits: Fat City Farms, Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, and SlowFood. The project will encompass over an acre of land on the high school’s property, immediately adjacent to the kitchen, where students will learn to grow food that will then be served as part of the cafeteria lunch service. As a measure of the enthusiastic response this project is garnering from the students, more than 60 kids have enrolled in a new class being offered this fall by science teacher Hadley Henschel entitled “Agricultural Sciences.”
“ Illène has been pivotal in getting this project off the ground,” said Jerome Osentowski project chairman and founder of CRMPI, on Wednesday night when the Mother of the Year award was given. Pevec’s work has secured an outreach grant from the University of Colorado to fund curriculum materials for the school. She is also working as a coordinator between the non-profits and the high school. And, once the work of building the infrastructure is complete, Illène plans to continue her involvement while completing her graduate dissertation by designing a study with the students to see how this work in the garden effects their eating habits and their school experience.
“This is our first time to give this award, and Illène is the obvious choice because her life work combines political activism with the nurturing strength of motherhood,” explains Sopris MAU co-founder Kathryn Diamond Camp. The local non-profit plans to make this an annual celebration of a local mother whose work on behalf of children inspires others in the community to join in the effort to create health, safety and opportunity for all children. Sopris MAU also supports political activism among mothers by providing childcare when possible so that local mothers can raise their voices in political action.
