We connected our Save-A-Lot partners with the outreach programs Young Ladies of Power and Archway Kids to host a day of taste-testing and fun. To prepare, we chatted with muralist Golden to create coloring pages that the kids could work on and talk about, all with the goal of giving Golden a bit of inspiration for his upcoming mural. The pages featured beautiful fruits and vegetables that the kids could color — but how about taste?

Piggybacking off of a fall-break visit to Booker T. Washington State Park, we brought Asia Wiggins from I Am Fitness and her epic juicing powers to the kids for an afternoon of taste-testing fresh juices. From celery and beets to ginger and apple, the kids had a chance to learn about each piece of produce and taste the juice for themselves. At the end of the day, they were each given a jar to create their own custom juice, putting together the ingredients they’d tried.

And of course, there was coloring. As the kids learned about each fruit and vegetable, they added new layers of color and fun to their coloring pages, which our GHC team scanned and shared with Golden. These sheets, along with quotes, poems and stories from the kids, became the basis for his mural.

In early November 2021, Golden turned all these inputs from the community into a big, bold, beautiful mural along the Save-A-Lot — conveniently just six feet away from the door to the market’s produce section. The mural brings color to the block, but it also shows our kids that their input matters.