Equality from the Ground Up

Adam Hill ’01 lives his values every day. As City Harvest Specialist for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Adam helps establish and manage community gardens in low income neighborhoods and through the Roots to Reentry Program Adam works with inmates, teaching them the farming and gardening skills to grow their own produce.

Thanks to a USDA grant-funded project, Adam has helped establish five new community gardens throughout Philadelphia. In one project he worked with the Nationalities Services Center to create 750 raised beds, of which 250 were designated for a community garden that brought together neighborhood residents and recently resettled refugees. Adam notes that it is a “good way to assimilate the refugees into the neighborhood.” He adds, “The language barrier is hard, but it is really rewarding.” The shared work of planting and maintaining the garden encourages the residents and refugees to interact cooperatively.

When working with a community, Adam helps supply directions, seeds, organic growing supplies, row cover and hoops, and pest control materials. The growers then sell their produce at a reduced cost or distribute it to those in need. Working with a garden is not a “once and done” experience. Adam continues to provide technical assistance and secure resources like high quality organic compost. The City Harvest Program supports four greenhouses all over city that supply 250,000 seedlings a year to the community gardens.

Adam grew up in Germantown. Living in a racially and economically diverse community, he learned to see that “everyone is going through the same stuff and being human.” His daily work with low-income populations has opened his eyes to their self-perceptions. “[It was] very different to see what their lives were like and what options they thought they had and perceived them to be. A lot of people haven’t left the eight-block area in which they have grown up.”

As a student at Greene Street Friends, Adam enjoyed the warm and loving environment of the lower school with teachers like Nita Hopkins and the growing academic challenge in the middle school. For Adam, science teacher Andy Jickling “stands out across the board.” Adam adds, “He was always a great presence. In third grade he did little experiments like having a hot pan contract in ice water.” These demonstrations piqued Adam’s interest in science. Andy also helped instill a love of plants and respect for the natural world. “Working in the Tree Lab in some way led me to what I do now,” Adam reflects. But the biggest lesson Adam learned at GSFS was “how you work with other people and treat other people.”

After Greene Street Friends, Adam went on to Central High School and the University of Pittsburgh. After college, Adam worked on several farms in both Latin America and in Pennsylvania.

When Adam joined the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in 2012, he began working with small groups of men and women in the Philadelphia Prison System. The farm is on the campus of a prison complex but is not within the confines of the correctional facilities. The inmates, who are from the Alternative Special Detention, House of Corrections, and Riverside Correction facilities, are responsible for all aspects of the farm, from planting to harvesting. Ssome lessons on cooking and nutrition are also included. Only men and women with sentences of less than two years are allowed to participate because the program focuses on teaching skills for reentry into the working world. “As the inmates learn new information and skills, they also gain confidence. It makes them think about what else is out there.” Today, Adam still manages this farm, but is no longer there on a daily basis.

Adam has been changed by his work. “I’ve gained better insight into other communities’ mindsets and thinking. It helps me understand more about what different people’s baseline assumptions are. When you didn’t grow up in extreme poverty it is easy to be judgmental. You learn to be more understanding.