DES MOINES, Iowa — An innovative program is offering at-risk youth and young adults experiencing homelessness a path toward a better future.
Rooftop Gardens is a Youth and Shelter Services (YSS) program and started in August 2024. It offers the chance for participants, aged 18-25, to gain soft skills, resume building, and career exploration through various methods.
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The program calls the classes cohorts. Each cohort averages 10-15 people and lasts six months, January-June and July-December. They are a mixture of classroom experience that helps decide a career path and also work in the freight farm — a converted 40 ft. shipping container that grows produce year-round and gives a committed job opportunity to cohort participants.
“In six months, there’s a lot of work, expectations, codes of conduct, a lot of the things that people just find normal in their everyday work lives,” said Samanthya Marlatt, Director of Youth Empowerment and Advocacy at YSS. “And that might be the first time that our young people have had this opportunity to engage in work where they’re allowed to like, fail and really work through that emerging adulthood piece so they can fail forward.”…