Inmates' garden program gets $16,000 boost
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer
KAILUA — Arlene Noel loves digging in the dirt and learning about plant propagation as part of a horticulture training program at the Women's Community Correctional Center, and now an infusion of money means she and other inmates can look forward to greater crop production and fewer blisters.
A grant of $11,950 from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and matching funds of $2,500 from the Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle and $1,500 from the state Department of Public Safety will provide a total of $15,950 to upgrade a sprinkler system, replace the roof of the horticulture classroom building and purchase a tiller for the Environmental Sciences Vocational Training Program.
The results will expand and improve the program, which for two years has been giving the inmates skills to get a job when they leave the facility.
Noel, 38, said the program has had a calming effect on her life while giving her skills she can use to help herself.
"It's just fun working with dirt," Noel said. "It's very therapeutic."
Noel said she's especially looking forward to having a tiller because the women had to use picks and hoes to work the dirt before.
The plants they grow are used in landscape projects and as food for their table.
The improved watering system will allow the center to put to use 27 hydroponic tables — where plants are grown in water instead of dirt — that have been idle for about a year because the existing watering system didn't fit with the tables, said Carol Ann Ellett, with the Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle.
"Some of these women have never worked together on a project," Ellett said. "They don't know the word teamwork. So they're learning how to cooperate with each other and work with each other."
Enough money will be left to cover the cost of reroofing a 30-foot-by-100-foot nursery building that contains classrooms and storage space for the vocational program, she said.
More than 100 women have gone through the program since it began in 2001 as a collaboration with the Lani-Kailua Outdoor Circle, the Garden Club of Honolulu and others, said Maureen Tito, education program manager for the Department of Public Safety.
Now the women and the program are ready to move to the level of learning that is needed in professional nurseries, Tito said. Expanding the hydroponic capabilities will help take them in that direction.
The tiller will help to implement a goal of the women to open a loi, or taro patch, and develop a native garden, she said.
"The garden can be part of their rehabilitation and also be used for visits," Tito said. "A place people can go that's outside, a respite place."
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com or 234-5266.
