LINDSBORG -- While the COVID-19 situation dashed dreams and cancelled plans for many members of the Bethany community, students Zephra Rice and Antonia Waggoner saw an opportunity to help people in need.
Working together on a relative’s farmland, Rice and Waggoner started a garden plot with the hopes of donating the produce to the local food bank.
These amateur gardeners brought in a bountiful harvest, producing and donating what Rice estimates as “three cases of a couple hundred yellow, teardrop cherry tomatoes…20 acorn squash, ten butternut squash, four spaghetti squash, 30 red onions, 30 radishes, 30 big boy tomatoes, and…more tomatoes on the way!”
They also harvested a handful of beans before the rabbits ate them all.
Families struggling with food insecurity had fresh produce this summer, thanks to the efforts of these Bethany students.
The plan and funds to start a garden grew out of an experience Rice enjoyed with other students in December when Dr. Arminta Fox, director of the Varenhorst Center and assistant professor of religion, and Professor Andrea Ring, associate professor of psychology, led Bethany students in hosting a Christmas Party for residents of Ashby House in Salina. This experience was designed to extend the learning of the course to practical applications with families in poverty and was made possible through a CIC/NetVUE Program Development Grant of $50,000 that Bethany College received in May of 2019 to strengthen vocational exploration.
The Ashby House trip was one of nine intended for the two-year grant period. Additional trips to worship sites in Wichita, to Heartland School, and to a Congressional session in Topeka, scheduled for late March 2020, were postponed due to the pandemic. Yet, even in the midst of hardship and rabbits, new life can take root and lead to abundance, as Rice and Waggoner have demonstrated.
The grant team is now accepting applications from faculty and staff for grant funds to digitally bring guest speakers (due to COVID-19, trips are no longer an option) to extend classroom learning to the broader Bethany community and plant the seeds for more student projects.
--Bethany College--