Purpose Park Becomes Virginia’s First Solar-Powered Rain-Harvesting Garden
What was once a barren piece of land along Norfolk’s historic Church Street corridor is now helping demonstrate what community-led sustainability can look like.
In December 2025, Teens With a Purpose unveiled a new solar-powered rain-harvesting system at Purpose Park Community Garden, creating what organizers describe as Virginia’s first solar-powered rain-harvesting garden.
Located at 801 Church Street in Norfolk, across from the historic Attucks Theatre and overlooking the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Purpose Park has become a place where food production, environmental education, creativity, youth leadership, and community healing come together.
The new system adds another layer to that mission by showing how rainwater and solar energy can be used to strengthen local food production while reducing dependence on traditional utilities.
Turning Rainfall Into a Community Resource
The Purpose Park system uses two retrofitted shipping containers fitted with elevated roofs designed to capture rainwater.
That water is directed into two 550-gallon cisterns. Solar panels charge batteries that power a pump, allowing the collected water to move through exterior hose connections and be used throughout the community garden.
The result is an off-grid irrigation system powered by sunlight and rainfall.
Before the installation, the garden relied on municipal water for irrigation. The rain-harvesting system provides an additional, renewable source of water while helping reduce ongoing utility costs and dependence on traditional infrastructure.
It also demonstrates a simple but important idea: rain does not only have to be managed as stormwater. It can also become a resource.
“Purpose Park is a living lab that treats rain as a resource,” said Tyrone Jarvis, Founder of Go Green Auto Care. “When you start seeing rain not as a problem but as an opportunity, everything changes—how we build, how we grow, how we survive.”
Building Climate Resilience at the Neighborhood Level
Norfolk communities regularly face challenges connected to flooding, stormwater management, extreme weather, and changing environmental conditions.
Projects like the Purpose Park rain-harvesting system demonstrate how sustainability efforts can begin at a neighborhood scale.
By capturing rainfall where it lands, the system can help reduce stormwater runoff while storing water that can later be used to support plants and food production.
The model offers several potential community benefits:
Reducing stormwater runoff
Providing renewable water for community gardening
Lowering irrigation-related utility costs
Supporting local food production
Reducing reliance on fossil-fuel-powered systems
Creating hands-on environmental learning opportunities
Building greater neighborhood resilience
The system also serves as a demonstration of how rain-harvesting technology can potentially be adapted for other community gardens, schools, businesses, and neighborhood projects.
“This garden is more than a showcase,” said Leslie Jarvis, President of the Society for a Secure and Sustainable Water Future. “It’s a blueprint for how communities can manage water responsibly and empower young people to lead that change.”
Sustainability Meets Youth Leadership
For Teens With a Purpose, the project extends beyond environmental infrastructure.
Purpose Park gives young people opportunities to experience sustainability firsthand.
Through gardening, environmental education, service, creative programming, and civic engagement, youth can see how decisions about water, food, public space, and the environment directly affect their neighborhoods.
That hands-on experience is especially important because environmental challenges are not abstract issues. They influence where people live, how communities grow food, how neighborhoods respond to flooding, and how future generations will experience their cities.
“We are proud to steward this innovative resource,” said Andre Love, Co-Executive Director of Teens With a Purpose. “It’s proof that sustainable solutions can be built right here in our community—by us, for us.”
A Collaboration With Purpose
The rain-harvesting project was made possible through collaboration among several organizations working in environmental sustainability, water stewardship, and community development.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation helped connect Teens With a Purpose with Go Green Auto Care and the Society for a Secure and Sustainable Water Future.
Together, the organizations helped transform Purpose Park into a working demonstration of how community spaces can incorporate sustainable water systems.
The project also provides a practical example of how Virginia’s rain-harvesting policies can translate into real-world community solutions.
Rather than sustainability existing only as legislation, research, or large infrastructure projects, Purpose Park demonstrates what environmental innovation can look like on a single city block.
How the Purpose Park Rain-Harvesting System Works
The system combines several straightforward technologies:
Two 550-gallon cisterns collect rainwater.
Rain falls onto two elevated 19-by-12-foot roof structures.
The captured water flows into the storage tanks.
Solar panels charge batteries that power the irrigation system.
A solar-powered pump delivers water through exterior hose connections.
Gardeners can then use the captured rainwater for manual irrigation.
Because the system is modular and operates independently of municipal water and traditional electrical infrastructure, the model may be adaptable for a variety of community settings.
Growing Food, Knowledge and Community
Purpose Park has evolved into much more than a garden.
The space demonstrates how neighborhoods can combine environmental stewardship, youth development, public art, food access, wellness, and civic engagement in one place.
For young people participating in Teens With a Purpose programs, the garden also creates opportunities to learn by doing.
They can explore questions such as:
How does water move through a city?
Where does our food come from?
How can neighborhoods prepare for environmental challenges?
What role can young people play in developing solutions?
These experiences turn environmental education into something tangible.
A young person can see rainfall collected, stored, powered by solar energy, and eventually used to grow food in the same neighborhood where they live.
A Model for What Communities Can Build
Purpose Park’s solar-powered rain-harvesting system shows how innovation does not always require massive infrastructure or distant solutions.
Sometimes change can begin with a garden, a few committed partners, and a community willing to rethink how everyday resources are used.
By turning rainfall into irrigation and sunlight into power, Purpose Park demonstrates how sustainability can support food access, education, climate resilience, and youth leadership at the same time.
For Teens With a Purpose, that connection is central to the organization’s work: giving young people opportunities to learn, lead, create, and help shape the future of their communities.
Learn more about Teens With a Purpose, Purpose Park, and opportunities to support youth-led community initiatives at www.twp-themovement.org.
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