help the middle school and highschool’s
“medically-fragile” enrollment
–mostly children with Down’s
Syndrome or congenital birth defects
that impairs vision, hearing, speech,
motor skills or some combination of all
four.
Everyone who knows her describes
Ogura as a “go-getter:” so she went
and got it. First she convinced school
administrators to buy-in to the idea.
They did, but with a caveat: Ogura
would have to raise the funds.
Undeterred, Ogura approached the
local Boy Scout troop for help with
budgeting. They came up with a figure
and with numbers firmly in hand,
Ogura approached and received grants
from the Buck Foundation (through
Philanthropic Ventures), Hercules High
School Parent Teacher Organization,
Hercules Education Foundation, as well
as individual donations.
She approached the school’s PTO
president at the time, Yuen, who also
has a reputation as a go-getter. “Yes,
I probably was one of the squeakier
parents,” Yuen admits rather sheepishly.
“I loved the idea from the start. Every
student deserves a good education,
regardless of disabilities.”
Before you could say, “how green
is my garden?” everyone was pitching
in: The Boy Scouts, among many
others, provided the muscle; tools,
seeds and supplies were donated
or discounted. Ogura’s son
shuttled borrowed equipment
back-and-forth and a team of
volunteers cleared the lot, spread
weed block fabric, built and
filled the raised beds and spread
the pathway materials. By the
beginning of school last fall,
everything had come together
in a garden so gorgeous and
blooming with life that even the
city’s mayor and city councilors
had to see.
The irony is that the sensorygarden
is a community building
exercise that is helping Hercules
reinvent itself. Founded in
1881 as a company town for an
explosives manufacturer, Hercules
has gone from sowing the
seeds of destruction, to sowing
pumpkin seeds. As urban sprawl
and skyrocketing home prices
pushes development farther and
farther out, Hercules is fastbecoming
a viable bedroom
community.
Adding to the sense of
community-building is Hercules’
remarkable diversity. When
united to work in the garden, it could
look like a Benetton ad, said Yuen.
Said Ogura: “Thanks to the
generosity of community businesses, the
Boy Scouts of Troop
#76, Dolan Lumber,
American Soil,
Sugar City Building
Materials, Trader Joe’s,
Adachi, and Annie’s
Annuals (through
the support of West
County Developing
Instructional Gardens
in Schools) and
many volunteers;
and “seed” money
from the Buck
Foundation (through
Philanthropic
Ventures), Hercules
High School Parent
Teacher Organization, Hercules
Education Foundation, as well as
individual donations, our Sensory
Garden has become a wonderful
addition to the Hercules Middle/
High School environment. We have
witnessed the kind of positive changes
that can take place when everything
and everyone cooperates in the spirit of
giving.
Here at the Hercules Educational
Fund, we share Ogura’s appraisal. It
was our pleasure to play a role–even
a modest one–in the success of the
sensory garden, which is a model
for the kinds of investments that
we envision as building blocks for a
stronger and healthier community.
Find more information about
the Sensory Garden and other
great projects you can support at
herculeseducationfoundation.org.
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