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Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee teaches importance of pollinators

Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee is helping expose young people to education about their food sources and about sustainable agriculture. The winner of the 1988 heptathlon gold medal, her first of many Olympic medals, tells Brownfield she began with a project growing crops with underprivileged youth in North St. Louis.

“The whole purpose of it wasn’t about what was growing, it was to able to introduce our young people to the opportunity in plant science in hopes of helping them to understand where food comes from,” said Joyner-Kersee, in an interview with Brownfield Ag News.

Joyner-Kersee recently visited the Illinois 4-H Memorial Camp, located between Champaign and Decatur, Illinois, as part of the Pollinator Habitat Program.

“The whole thing around pollinators is this event they do with young people,” said Joyner-Kersee, “so they can plant with the birds, the bees and understand why it’s so important to our environment, to us, as humans, and to nature.”

The program is designed to create awareness for the importance of pollinators. Joyner-Kersee worked with 4H youth doing activities such as planting pollinator habitat.

AUDIO: Jackie Joyner-Kersee

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