BY BRANDY TEMPLETON

The Statesville Family YMCA held its annual “Eat Lunch With a Camper” event on Thursday.

Chef Michael Spencer prepared a delicious meal for Executive Director Blake Blakley, the YMCA Board of Directors and other guests.

The attendees were invited to join the campers’ tables and see what they’ve learned this summer, with each age group giving a special presentation.

Among the important topics was how to prevent food waste.

Garden Coordinator Melinda Spencer said she was especially proud of her Cultivation Garden Crew.

The group of middle-schoolers had an educational and exciting summer learning about gardening, food deserts, food waste, repurposing, and other topics.

One in seven American households are food insecure, and that statistic includes 13 million children.

The campers learned that 40 percent of food is wasted in America.

“It was a great lesson on sustainability,” she said. “This was a bigger deal than I thought. There’s plenty of uneaten food we can be feeding to others.”

The campers, along with Melinda Spencer and Lindsey Manning (UNC-Asheville Art Education student), brainstormed ideas to help with the issue of food waste and bring awareness by creating “art with a purpose.”

Three ways the campers decided to help was by sharing their unwanted and unopened food at lunchtime, adding food scraps to the garden where worms can eat it (composting), and creating unique visual art food sculpture with facts to share.

For a week, campers collected uneaten and wasted food from their homes and used it in their sculpture.

“We used artist Kathleen Ryan as our inspiration with our sculpture,” Melinda shared. “She shows how ugly food can look beautiful.”

Along with that project, the campers enjoyed working in the YMCA garden and harvesting the vegetables.

Another exciting project for the group was experimenting in a repurposed YMCA bus that’s being transformed into an arts & science center.

The middle-school campers planted grass heads in cups and used both natural and artificial lights to help grow their seedlings.

They formed hypotheses and were excited to discover that the artificial light worked the best to grow their grass.

Melinda is super excited for the campers’ hard work and the future of the bus classroom.

“Our goal is to add grow lights and make it a working classroom,” she shared.

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