Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary at Good Shepherd 🙏

We started a community garden as a wholesome outdoor learning experience for kids. We taught the importance of stewardship. They planted seeds and flowers. Soon all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to participate and many did. A small initiative quickly and unexpectedly grew to be so much more by offering programs that actively engaged them in uniquely educational and nurturing programs. We filled a need beyond what we could anticipate. While planting a garden, we grew a community based on the formative, positive impact of nature learning that enhances empathy, fosters mindfulness, encourages us to pay attention to the smallest details, finding a butterfly egg the size of a grain of sand, to be in the here and now with wonder and curiosity.
All that became bundled into a visionary initiative, the "Adopt-a-Caterpillar" program, that allowed participants to take home a monarch caterpillar, to witness the amazing miracle of metamorphosis with their own eyes, in their own homes.