Impact and Give Back: Supporting Educational Enrichment in Daphne’s Schools (SEEDS)
Planting SEEDS
-Liesel Schmidt
As cities grow and change, its needs also shift—and those needs trickle down past the infrastructure of housing and transportation to reach the members of the community too young to purchase a home or drive a car.
Where there are children, there is a need for the schools to educate them, and providing a quality education is the burden of the communities in which they live. For Daphne, that burden has been taken on by the efforts of an organization called Supporting Educational Enrichment in Daphne’s Schools (SEEDS).
Created in early 2004, SEEDS essentially began with a small group of parents concerned with advancing educational opportunities for all Daphne students. Their first meeting was organized and led by Denise D’Oliveira and Ruth Seawell, both of whom had a great deal of experience in education advocacy and community engagement, and the organization took shape over the next year.
“Our stated mission was to promote a lifelong love of learning among the children of Daphne by providing enrichment opportunities at school and within the community and by advocating for educational improvements and innovations,” explains SEEDS Executive Director Beth Dunn. “Our work was focused in the areas of providing enrichment, encouraging improvements, building community, and raising funds.”