Gardening is hard work, says Rebecca Amoah, but when you see the benefits it can bring to a community, “it’s amazing.”

The grade 12 Riverside Secondary student joined other young people from across Windsor in the Campus Community Garden on Tuesday to launch the local Change the World project, part of a province-wide Youth Volunteer Challenge.

The challenge encourages youth to volunteer in their communities. Windsor’s project, led by the United Way, aims to involve 375 students—from the public, Catholic, and French-language school boards—in planting at community gardens through the city and county.

Adeline Gaspard, a UWindsor alumna now working on the project for the United Way, says it will introduce students to resources they may not have known were available.

“To have them work in these gardens is helping to create a long-term solution to the issue of food security,” she said.

Amoah and fellow volunteers prepared the garden for planting—spreading fresh wood chips along walking paths, cleaning up the winter’s debris, and clearing around a raised bed to make it accessible to gardeners in wheelchairs.

The project will run through May 20.