Harvesting HOPE
Cindy Vinson and her husband were on a cruise in 2005 when they met another couple from the Birmingham area.
As Vinson’s husband was singing on stage with a band, the husband from the other couple went to play drums. Meanwhile, the wives struck up a conversation and that’s when Vinson found out they were Keith and Amy Richards, owners of Taziki’s restaurants.
“I told them I worked with special needs students and took them to places in the community to get job experience either before or after they graduate,” she said. “He told me he had a business, and I told him it would be a win-win situation for us both to let me bring a student with special needs and do a training opportunity.”
Thus began the partnership of Vinson’s students working at Taziki’s locations, beginning in 2005 at the Lee Branch location and then spreading to other locations. Vinson said she would have between one and three students in all of his locations until that program ended in 2012.
After that, Vinson and Richards co-founded a new program called The HOPE Project with a purpose of providing meaningful work to students who have disabilities. The students would maintain gardens and then sell their herbs and vegetables to Taziki’s.
“Taziki’s passion for The HOPE Project has grown because of the multiple opportunities it offers to students with disabilities,” Richards said in a statement on Taziki’s website. “The HOPE Project helps with job placement but also sets an example for how we can help other restaurants partner with schools to create HOPE gardens and employ individuals with special needs.”
Shelby County Schools began creating HOPE gardens in 2012, with the first one planted at Vincent High School. The project is currently in its 10th year.
Over the past decade, HOPE gardens have been planted at almost all Shelby County high schools, and Chelsea High School’s garden was completed in April. It is the seventh HOPE garden at a county school, and the following garden was completed at the Linda Nolen Learning Center.
HOPE stands for “Herbs Offering Personal Enrichment.” Vinson said students in the program are taught transferable life skills they are needed whether at work or at home. The entire process includes planting the seed to using the herbs in a recipe. Items grown and harvested include parsley, oregano, rosemary, basil and a variety of vegetables.
Students in the program learn to use math, agriculture and science skills while providing an income for their programs. Another part of the partnership is Taste of Taziki’s, in which students go to participating restaurants and see the herbs that they harvested, Vinson said.
“We go through each one of them, and everybody gets a sample of each herb,” she said. “They get to taste the different items they use it in.”
The Chelsea HOPE garden is located near the high school’s entrance and was constructed in the shape of the letter “C.” It was a project by a former Eagle Scout student, and students in the program helped build it.
Vinson said the program is hands-on and that it’s fun for the students to get out of the classroom and into an outdoor setting.
Students in the special education department work with other organizations within the schools so that each student has a partner. Chelsea partners with its Garden Club, and other schools partner with the agriculture department, peer groups and more.