The Valley Child Development Center opened in the farming community of Red Cloud in 2018. The Center quickly found a niche when a board member’s niece, Bri and her husband Bruce, who lived in California, learned of the Edible Schoolyard, a program developed by food activist and chef Alice Waters to offer “students experiential learning opportunities that deepen their relationship with food, facilitate learning the skills of cooking and gardening” (edibleschoolyard.org).

Marin Johnson and Ja’Nae Smith are two young people who grew up in Omaha and found themselves thrust into independence without the family supports that make the transition easier. As Smith put it, “it’s hard when you don’t have that parental support system.” Had it not been for their discovery of Project Everlast, their journey to adulting might have been quite different.

Earlier in October, Nebraska Children had the privilege of hosting Changemakers, an annual gathering to celebrate the positive impacts happening throughout Nebraska.

“Women tend to laugh more and live longer than men,” says the woman on the stage. She’s gray-haired, bespectacled. She looks like a grandmother or a principal, and indeed she was an educator in the past. She moves away from…