At Land to Learn, we believe young people are essential leaders in building just and sustainable community systems. Our youth leadership programs — RadicleRoots and the DigInternship — create pathways for teens and college students to gain real skills, meaningful work experience, and a deep connection to the land, food, and communities they live in and serve.

RadicleRoots Teen Apprenticeship Program

Paid summer employment and leadership development for youth ages 14–19

The RadicleRoots program offers teens in Beacon and Newburgh the opportunity to work, learn, and lead in their local food systems. Through partnerships with Cornell Cooperative Extension's Green Teen Program in Beacon and Our Core in Newburgh, we recruit teen apprentices who help maintain community gardens, assist with educational programming, and develop valuable skills in food systems, environmental stewardship, and teaching.

Participants earn fair wages through Orange and Dutchess Counties' Summer Youth Employment Programs while gaining hands-on work experience, mentorship from our Educators, and a cultivated connection to the land and food that sustains their communities.

Why RadicleRoots?

The radicle is the first part of a plant embryo to emerge from the seed during germination — the root that grows downward into the soil, anchoring the seedling and absorbing water and nutrients. It's the foundation. That's what this program is about: grounding young people in their communities, giving them roots, and creating the conditions for growth.

RadicleRoots is also a multidimensional response to the traumas of food apartheid, consumer capitalism, and white supremacy. It creates space for Newburgh and Beacon youth to claim sovereignty over land and food in their own communities. Informed by feedback from youth participants themselves, the program reimagines a world that prioritizes collective ownership of food and land, celebrates intergenerational connections to ancestral knowledge, and sustains healing, regenerative relationships with nourishing ecosystems.

What Participants Gain

RadicleRoots teens develop stronger community connections, leadership skills, and confidence. Many return to mentor younger youth in other garden-based programs. Participants describe learning to grow healthy relationships — with the land, with their peers, and with themselves — while deepening their appreciation for growing and maintaining their own food. These experiences are transformative, creating spaces for healing, mutual respect, and understanding.

Teen staff are employed throughout the summer to maintain and improve school gardens for the SproutEd program. They also lead garden-based activities for younger kids at the Boys & Girls Club of Newburgh and the Beacon Rec Center Camp.

Radicle Roots program participants engage in training and discussion around food justice and community building. They harvest produce from school gardens and Newburgh’s Downing Park Urban Farm to donate to community food pantries and kitchens.

Dig Internship Program

Hands-on, garden-based learning experience for college students studying education

The Dig Internship provides college students with real-world experience working with school gardens and elementary students. Through partnerships with regional colleges and universities — including SUNY New Paltz, Vassar College, and Marist College — education students gain practical skills they can bring directly into their future classrooms.

Interns work alongside Land to Learn Educators, supporting garden-based programming in local schools and learning how to integrate food, agriculture, and environmental education into elementary curricula. It's experiential learning that prepares the next generation of teachers to bring garden-based education into schools throughout the region.

Why the Dig Internship Matters

By training future educators now, we're not only expanding our reach to more children today — we're planting seeds for garden-based education to flourish in classrooms for years to come. Dig Interns leave the program motivated and equipped to incorporate hands-on, food-centered learning into their teaching careers, multiplying the impact of Land to Learn's work across the Hudson Valley and beyond.

We welcome opportunities to collaborate with additional colleges and universities. If your institution is interested in partnering with Land to Learn to provide students with meaningful, mission-driven fieldwork, we'd love to connect.

“patience,” “hard work,” “teamwork,” “cooperation,” “friendship,” “courage,” and “responsibility.”

-teen participants naming important skills gained during their time working with LtL

“I learned that I can take on the challenge of being a leader.”

-Radicle Roots Newburgh participant

“I changed my whole major because of working here because now I love nature and farming.”