It's been a great year with Urban Kids so far, and we're looking forward to spring!

Before you know it, we will be kicking off our awesome summer learning program. We'll have a mandatory parent meeting on February 23rd at 6 p.m. with important information about enrolling in our summer and fall programs. If you have a student in the West End Community you would like to enroll, please plan to attend.

In the meantime, here is what we've been up to since the New Year:

• In January, students from Birmingham-Southern College helped to paint and clean out the Urban Kids library. We are so grateful for this and the other service work they completed here and in other parts of the West End and Woodlawn communities during their January term service-learning class:

• We welcomed Lindsay Whiteakear as our newest staff assistant. Lindsay has been a regular Urban Kids and WE Gardens volunteer (below left: working with kids at our Collard Green Cook-Off) and we are so lucky to have her. She is eager to start working with the kids in the garden this spring, and she also makes delicious and nutritious fruit smoothies with the kids every Thursday. I love seeing the great things she has brought to our program!

• Joy O'Neal sponsored a field trip for our kids to visit her farm. BIG thanks to Ms. O'Neal, who sponsors visits to her horse farm yearly, and has even been known to bring horses to West End on occasion! Mrs. O'Neal is also offering riding lessons to our kids as an incentive to read Black Beauty. Below, our students learned to lasso on the farm:

• Thanks also to Dr. Tom Harris for sponsoring transportation and funding for monthly field trips for our students. In December, we saw The Chocolate Nutcracker at the Alabama Theatre. This year we attended a Samford University basketball game and went to see Our Journey, a black history month performance sponsored by the Alys Stevens Center and ArtPlay. (Below: more about the group of High School students who wrote and performed "Our Journey.")

• We made Valentine's Day cards for veterans in the VA hospital. Thanks to Mrs. Kelly Neil for teaching our kids about the true meaning of giving love on Valentine's Day.

• Piggly Wiggly began donating fruit to our after-school program. We also received a fridge from the Community Food Bank's Produce in Pantry program to help store our fresh snacks.