The students in "WAVE":   Work-Achieve-Volunteer-Experience, a program of YouthWorks and the Brockton Area Workforce Investment Board, dewsigned, painted and installed these welcoming gates to our garden in the summer of 2015.     Learn more at  www.bawib.org

Members of the Brockton Boys and Girls Club joined with FDNA Volunteers in April of 2015 to rake up leaves, deadhead old plants, pull weeds, spread mulch, and get the garden ready for a busy year.

We gathered at our Liberty Tree in Brockton, where Mr. Edward Bennett, Brockton abolitionist, greeted the audience and told the story of his stable, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad in the mid 1800s. Mr. Douglass addressed the city at this very site, most likely while on a speaking tour for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1841.

 

Accompanied by songs performed by members of our Brockton churches, we walked from the Liberty Tree to the Douglass Garden where we read the speech in three languages familiar to our community: English, Haitian Creole, and Cape Verde Creole.  The Massasoit Theater Company started us off, and then members of the audience read in the language each chooses.

 

After completion of the communal reading, we enjoyed conversation, community spirit, and ice cream sundaes in the garden.