Building More Than Just Structures: Aims Students Support Loveland Youth Gardeners

Loveland Youth Gardeners is a nonprofit organization that empowers youth facing challenges to cultivate life skills, environmental stewardship, and community service. Loveland Youth Gardeners established a youth-led farm that hosts chickens, bees, medicinal and culinary gardens, production rows, student-raised beds, a farm stand and more. Situated next to the Loveland Boys & Girls Club and the City of Loveland’s Willow Bend Park, the farm encompasses a 0.6-acre tract of land.

Since 2021, Aims students have volunteered to build infrastructure at the farm, including planter boxes, picnic tables, and storage shelving, and they have honed their building and construction skills. Aims Program Coordinator for Construction and Engineering Technology, Phong Tram, developed this partnership with Loveland Youth Gardeners. “Even though we are in Greeley, we are also a part of the Loveland and Larimer County community,” Tram said. “We want to help give back.” 

New Picnic Table on Site

Aims Construction Management and Technology student Keira Zabel created the latest addition to the farm: a new picnic table. Since childhood, Zabel helped her father with projects around the house. “He taught me how to use power tools from a pretty young age,” she said. “It's always been my second nature to use them.” She accompanied him to worksites, where her dad owns and operates a custom home-building company. Keira wants to work for her dad after graduation and hopes to take over when he retires. 

Tram told her about previous projects and the organization's mission — to empower youth facing challenges to cultivate skills, environmental stewardship, and a spirit of community service. “I have a lot of friends and cousins who are in that same situation as those kids,” Zabel said. “I'm proud of the picnic table that I built because I know that that's going to be a really good place. I feel good about what I built.” 

With her skills and the first year and Aims under her belt, the picnic table she built is the biggest thing she’s constructed on her own. It was 100 percent her complete project. Tram told her to “be as creative as you want to be.” Zabel found inspiration online to develop the project; she found a design she liked on Pinterest.  The table she made is larger than the ones already on site, with more seats “for more people to sit and collaborate.” 

Students like Keira are honing their construction skills with this collaboration, but it may inspire the youth who use the garden. Having an Aims presence at the site can help “promote a culture of college,” Tram said.  It may inspire some at-risk youth who manage the farm to consider pursuing training and higher education. 

Future Projects

Tram is working on gathering funding and resources to build a new shed for the organization at the site. “I want to either get industry partners to donate money or materials,” he said. The project would recruit females in the Construction Management program to work on the shed as a team. He hopes that the initiative will showcase women in construction. It would also be an opportunity for Aims students to apply the skills they have learned to real-life experiences. This also benefits Loveland Youth Gardeners by giving them a new and much-needed shed for their farmstand. Their current one is really falling apart, leaking and has other issues. 

The collaboration between Aims Community College students and Loveland Youth Gardeners exemplifies a unique blend of education and community service, demonstrating the transformative potential of combining hands-on learning with meaningful contributions.