I’ve got a special place in my heart for the whole veggie-oil-powered educational caravanning movement. There’s nothing like a bus-full of earnest hippies, working for free, spreading the gospel on sustainability and alt-fuels.
Add organic education and tree planting at woefully underserved urban schools to the mix — as in the case of the Common Vision Fruit Tree Tour — and I’m smitten. If only my dim and distant memories of public school education were this much fun.
This month, Common Vision brings the three D’s (drum circles, dancing and digging your hands in the dirt) to LA’s woefully underserved urban school system. In a flower-painted school bus, loaded up with 27 volunteer educators and 1000 fruit trees, they’ll visit 20 cities from San Diego to Sacramento on a 70-day tour — hoping to break last year’s record of over 9000 miles traveled on veggie oil. Each year, the tour visits new schools to plant new orchards, while returning to check up on old school orchards planted over the course of their four year run. Along they way they dance, sing, rap and plant their message of equal access to sustainable food systems, ecological education, and hands-on earth appreciation.
“The legacy of 20 planted trees will live with us throughout our campus for many years to come,” enthuses Ley Yeager, principal of Vista Del Valle Elementary School in Claremont. “We’re already making plans to plant more trees with the hope that this seasonal produce will help enhance our school lunch program’s salad bar. And what if we end up with more fruit than we can eat here? Our students are already asking, ‘Who else could we help feed?’”
Elementary school grads who want to catch Common Vision in action can check them out downtown on Saturday, March 3rd at Los Angeles City Hall. Ed Begley Jr. will introduce the Fruit Tree Tour Drummers at a kickoff event for the new Keep LA Beautiful Campaign, a part of the Great American Cleanup.
