The 2010 Fun in the Sun-Summer of Service (FITS-SOS) Guadalupe group is an exceptional model of the impact that dedication, perseverance and hard work can have on building/improving a community’s overall safety, awareness and vibrancy.  

The FITS-SOS Guadalupe group, made up of 13 participants from 6^th-9^th grade, worked on a service-learning project that took place in an intersection on the corner of 7^th Street and Campodonico in Guadalupe, CA with a one lane street that is open to two way traffic.  Next to the intersection, there was a vacant, trash and weed filled city lot.  Since there was no formal sidewalk, parents with children and strollers had to walk into oncoming traffic and be in danger of getting hit by a car.  The group, having just learned the value of biodiversity, saw an opportunity to turn this unattractive and dangerous lot into a beautiful and safe native garden using what they had learned to promote biodiversity.  They made it their goal to build this native garden and make their community a safer and more beautiful place to live in.

Participants got to work immediately and began with identifying different community needs, and organizations addressing those needs.  They interviewed community members about community issues, and identified different organizations that might be able to help them put together a project.  A project proposal was created by the students for the City Administrator of Guadalupe.  Students went to Oso Flaco Lake to conduct an assessment of invasive species and the impacts invasive species have on native plants.

Participants created a timeline with objectives, they took measurements of the possible layouts and other lots within the city, and created a scale drawing and map of a safe pathway through the garden.  The FITS-SOS group wrote letters and recruited local businesses and organizations to help with in-kind gifts for their garden.  The group also worked very hard on creating their vision of the plot and developing their presentation for the Guadalupe City Council.  The group asked city council for permission to use the site.  The city council granted their request. 

Students created a new timeline, with tasks for everyone to work on.  All of the hard work in the previous weeks had paid off during the last week of the project.  Donations of plants, soil and mulch started arriving, and the group put all their energy into the project working morning and afternoon.  They split into three groups, one responsible for transplanting donated plants, one responsible for the gravel path, and one responsible for putting up and painting a donated fence.  After the fence was secure, students used donated paint to paint the fence.  Once all of the plants were planted and labeled, and the gravel path and fence completed, students distributed mulch around the garden to prevent weeds from coming up.  This signified the completion of the garden, giving the students a final opportunity to celebrate their accomplishment, and share the garden with their parents, peers and local community members. 

On the last day of the project, the group took pictures of the work they had completed over the past six weeks.  A neighbor came out and told the students that people were using the gravel path as opposed to the street, and cars were slowing down as they passed by the garden.  The students had made the intersection a safer place for the community by creating a garden with a safe walkway for pedestrians.  This filled the students with a sense of joy that their community was a better place because of their new native garden and their hard work.