Lewiston children tasted vegetables, like arugula and eggplant, they never knew existed, when Kirsten Walter '00 of Los Gatos, Calif., created the Hillview Community Garden project. In recognition of her efforts, Walter received the 2000 national Campus Compact Howard R. Swearer Humanitarian Award and the 2000 Gleistman Foundation's Michael Schwerner Activist Award.

The Swearer award recognizes outstanding contributions made by college and university students to the community. The Schwerner award recognizes five U.S. undergraduates for their exceptional achievement in fulfilling the spirit of citizen activism and promoting positive solutions for social change.

A community studies major with a focus on political science, education and environmental studies, Walter established communal gardens at Hillview as a model for community development that focused on the power of public gardens to transform individual lives and bring people together in the community. She created a Learning Garden Project with the Hillview children and developed production plots with 14 families to help provide food security as well as to connect individuals to their land. Walter also conducted workshops on composting and landscaping and helped the children to build a vegetable stand and cook dinner with the produce from their garden. The project was funded by a community work-study grant through the Bates College Center for Service Learning. She continues the project in Lewiston this summer.

The Hilltop Community Garden that Walter planned last winter and spring and worked to establish during the summer, turned into a case study for her senior thesis."Kirsten's passion for social justice and love of the earth helped to create a community which nurtured its members and strengthened their ability to give back to that community," Bates College President Donald W. Harward said. "Her communal gardens provide an elegantly simple, yet powerful model for releasing human potential and building community. We are extremely proud of Kirsten's work."