the national medal for Museum and Library Services is the nation's highest
honor for libraries and museums that are serving their communities in exceptional
ways Garfield Park Conservatory director Unita rushing and Community member Tiara
Livingston traveled to Washington from Chicago Illinois to receive the national
medal and spoke to imls about how the museum impacts the community the
Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance is a nonprofit
organization that uh empowers people and changes their lives through uh the power
of nature and the alliance raises funds to develop and Implement uh Innovative
programs there that educate people about the importance of plants in our lives
every day so we uh provide educational programs as well as special events
geared toward uh School AG children families and adults
[Music] well the Green Team program consists of
14 to 19 year olds and it can be over a period of time you can participate in it
from freshman year to senior which is what I did well working at the
conservatory me meeting most of the staff that worked at the conservatory so
they would come in sometimes and just give us an overview of what they did and
how they got to where they were at and then just like a boost for us to stand
up I guess and want to want to learn more about the conservatory it's
collection the plants and all of those things I did it because I just wanted
something to do after school because living in the community that I lived in
there wasn't really too much for me to do one of the aspects that the community
said that they really would like to have addressed was uh more opportunities for
Youth and we felt that this was a real opportunity for us to engage them on
various levels if you think about maintaining and running a conservatory
there's so many uh jobs and career paths that we could expose them to we have
over 200,000 visitors annually and so if they're on the floor uh giving tours
acting as dosant if they're in the greenhouse helping to propagate plants
if they're creating objects to be sold in our gift shop they're getting a
myriad of uh exposure and Hands-On skills development that is really
important to a Young Person's development I am attending the Paul
University um in Lincoln Park I am majoring in
sociology and I'm also currently working at the conservatory with the Graff Park
Conservatory Alliance um as an administrative assistant as well as a
gift shop um associate uh it is important for teens to have
opportunities in the communities where they live because teens don't
traditionally travel outside of their communities very far and the
conservatory has been an institution in the Garfield Park Community for over a
hundred years and it is the right thing to do for us to reach out and engage
teens in the programs and the initiatives that we have at the
conservatory because these teens will become adults and if they support and
believe in what we do there when they become adults they'll hopefully continue
to support the work of the conservatory and can come back and talk about what it
meant to them and their lives we're mentoring them helping them to make the
right decisions for their lives and their future the teenss will become like
Tiara thinking far beyond High School thinking about who it is they want to be
as adults when they grow up what they want to be and how they want to make a
contribution to society