Every so often, a project comes along that is quietly profound. It doesn’t try to solve the world’s biggest problems in one sweep. Instead, it starts small — with seeds, and soil, and a group of preschoolers ready to discover what it means to watch something grow. That’s exactly what Lani, Lily, Mira, and Samirah set out to do.
These four 8th graders at Westside Neighborhood School are LumenSparQ’s newest Ember Project recipients, and their SWIM (Solutionary Work in Motion) project is as grounding as it sounds: they built a small vegetable garden for a preschool classroom at Moffett State Preschool.
Guided by the question “How can we help the community and environment by planting a garden?”, the team got to work. They planted lettuce, bell peppers, spinach, radish, basil, and parsley — a modest but meaningful collection of edibles that will give preschool-aged children an up-close look at where food comes from and what it means to care for something living.
But this project was never just about vegetables.
At its heart, it was about connection — between older students and younger ones, between people and the natural world, between a community and the land it inhabits. Lani, Lily, Mira, and Samirah understood that a garden isn’t simply a patch of dirt with plants in it. It’s something that requires tending, attention, and shared responsibility. In building it for the preschool, they gave those young children a living lesson in stewardship — and a reason to come together around something they can watch, touch, water, and eventually taste.
There’s something beautiful about 8th graders choosing to pour their time and energy into something for preschoolers they’ll likely never fully get to see grow up alongside the garden they planted. That generosity of spirit is exactly what the Ember Project is designed to celebrate.
We’re proud to support Lani, Lily, Mira, and Samirah — four young women who looked at their community and their environment and asked: What can we do? And then went and did it.
