Marvin Hayes is the program manager for the Baltimore Compost Collective which provides life skills mentorship and first-time employment for area youth. The Compost Collective collects food scraps from local customers and creates compost for the Filbert Street Community Garden, the largest community garden in Baltimore. The program was inspired by BK ROT in Brooklyn and is a collaboration between ILSR and United Workers. Marvin is a longtime youth life-skills mentor from Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. His youth mentorship experience spans more than 20 years and ranges from managing youth programs ,leading wilderness experiential learning expeditions to coaching football and basketball in inner-city Baltimorealtimore Compost Collective is a project of United Workers – in partnership with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Filbert Street Community Garden. The Baltimore Compost Collective is a youth entrepreneurship program that trains participants in workforce skills, food access programming, and community-scale composting in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of South Baltimore. BCC provides first-time employment for area youth, giving them experience working with a green start-up enterprise and entrepreneurial skills. Under the leadership of Master Composter, Marvin Hayes, youth are trained in composting best management practices – receiving guided, hands-on experience managing a small-scale composting operations through experiential learning. The program also supports Filbert Street Garden’s outdoor education and food access programming. BCC anticipates that the success of the Baltimore Compost Collective as a model for community-oriented composting operation that will lead the City to invest in a distributed composting infrastructure that builds community and equity.
