W.P. Rawl & Sons Inc. in Pelion, SC, will host Katie’s Krops Camp, a total-immersion growing experience July 8-11 for young Katie’s Krops growers from across the country. Once a year, over the summer, about 15 young growers with a parent or chaperone are invited to travel to South Carolina and the farm of W.P. Rawl, camp sponsor. W.P. Rawl is a family-owned and operated farm that specializes in leafy greens and other seasonal vegetables.

“It has always been my dream to create a sustainable solution to hunger by creating a young family of growers,” Katie Stagliano said in a statement. “This camp is an opportunity to bring the Katie’s Krops growers together, to learn new skills, to make new friends and grow the dream that is Katie’s Krops. It is W.P. Rawl’s generosity makes this all-expenses-paid camp possible.” Rawl also provides a college scholarship to the Katie’s Krops grantee of the year.

During the course of the camp, the young growers learn new and creative growing techniques, host a service project, create lasting friendships with fellow growers, receive valuable information on food safety and tour the Rawl farm. In 2013, W.P. Rawl partnered with Katie’s Krops, to help it move toward Katie’s personal goal of having a kid-run garden in all 50 states.

Katie’s Krops began in 2008 with a 9-year-old South Carolina girl who grew a school-project seedling into a 40-pound cabbage that served 275 people. Katie Stagliano is now 16, the founder and “chief executive gardener” of Katie’s Krops, which currently funds 80 gardens in 29 states coast to coast, operated by young people ages 9 to 16, with harvests donated to help feed people in need.

Katie has written a book, Katie’s Cabbage, that tells how she, then a third-grader from Summerville, SC, decided to put her mammoth cabbage to good use by donating it to a local soup kitchen, and how, as Katie put it in an interview, “one thing just led to another.” Published by the University of South Carolina Press, the book was written with Michelle H. Martin and illustrated by Karen Heid.

At a 2014 book-signing at the Charleston County Public Library, about a dozen children and their parents filed into the Children’s Library to hear Katie read her book. Afterwards, the author autographed copies of Katie’s Cabbage. She told The Produce News, “I hope my book will inspire other kids and show how small actions can have a big impact.” Stagliano is the youngest recipient of the Clinton Global Citizen Award, presented to her by actor Matt Damon in 2012.

Katie also started a grant program to recruit 9- to 16-year-olds into the gardening program, offering renewable financial aid and other help from Katie’s Krops. Winners are awarded a gift card of up to $500 for a garden center in their area and a digital camera to document their garden and its harvest. Applications are accepted from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 yearly.