Santana Webb
Santana Webb might be the youngest of six siblings in her family, but she is strong, confident, and wise, and it shows in the way she talks and acts. “You can’t just judge a person based of what you think, you got to actually know them, to understand them,” she said. She started gardening in 2017 with her grandmother, Rose. After gardening for two years with her grandmother Rose, she enticed her mother Sandra and her paternal grandma Linda to start gardening with her too. Now, her family has four garden beds in the corner of the Cherry Street Community Garden. For Santana, gardening is a way to get outside and be active and to grow something she can eat. “Gardening is a place for us to get active. Me and my brother, we like to stay in the house, he loves to game, he stay on the game, and when we come out here to water he also came out here to water, just something for us to get out of the house, just something to get us out of our comfort zones.” She has learned how to grow unfamiliar vegetables, connect with other gardeners, and speak at events related to the garden. Santana loves to cook what she grows and bake for her family, acts of sharing and caring that she learnt from her mother, who learned these values from her mother. These days she has been a bit of a homebody, drawing, painting, and doing her nails when she isn’t at school or in the garden with her mother and grandmas. She is also writing a book about her experience with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare but severe condition that affects school-age kids who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. She describes her experience spending three weeks in the hospital, and shares the fear she had for what the illness might be like. “The next day, the doctor told me my heart was only pumping ten percent, that was a sad thing to know, but it was a good thing to know because I knew that I was doing better and I knew that I was getting better.” She expresses gratitude for her family for staying by her side in the hospital and supporting her. “I thank my mom, granny and grandma because they was switching in the night and getting updates from the doctor.” It was Santana, however, who had the strength to pull through. She is committed to spreading awareness about this illness and encourages children to be vaccinated. Santana is not just any kid. She’s already a thoughtful and confident speaker, a gardener, an active community member, and a kind person who is already making a big difference in the world around her. |
Santana talks about what they grew her first year at Cherry Street Garden
Santana talks about cooking alongside her mother
Santana talks about her experience with MIS-C
Santana talks about working with the Young Farmers group
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