HELPING THE LOCAL ROSELAWN COMMUNITY

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Maegan, Annah, and Lydia took action to help their local watershed by catching rainwater and creating a drip irrigation system that will nourish a garden. Their focus is to help the New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn, OH. Their plan is to help them utilize rainwater and turn it into a fresh garden for the people of the community. The drip irrigation system they put in place will accommodate five-100 ft beds and it will grow yummy fruits veggies to promote health and good environmental habits. They feel this is something they can do to extensively help the watershed and community.

On April 7 2018, the girls and their families and friends woke up early to go to the church to complete their project. With all the family and friends there were many volunteers that came and helped them. First, a videographer from the Watershed project asked the girls questions about the project. They filmed Annah and Lydia as they participated in the ripple challenge around the world. After filming, they laid out the hundreds of feet of tubing across the garden. They carefully poked holes spaced 3 feet apart. Finally, they inserted pipes for the water to flow so the crops could receive water. These steps are key to a successful drip irrigation system.

The purpose of this project is to use resources already available but not in its current form for the community. By building the drip irrigation system Annah, Lydia, and Maegan were able to save money on the water that would have had to be used to water the gardens at the Roselawn church. This is because the water is being supplied from rainfall and will be dispersed into the gardens on a timed system. They have high hopes that this new system will provide fresh foods to the people in Roselawn. This will have a long lasting impact on the community because of the food desert they live in. Going forward, the fresh fruits and vegetables grown through the use of the drip irrigation system will supplement the diets of those living in the area creating a healthier community.

AQUAPONICS SYSTEM AT MIRA LOMA HIGH SCHOOL

2017, Sacramento, California, USA

Aquaponics at Mira Loma

Ravina Sidhu took 4^th place in the Caring for Our Watersheds finals for her excellent proposal to build an aquaponics system on her school’s campus to demonstrate this water and resource efficient growing system. After Ravina proposed this project, her sister Jasleen (pictured above w/ teacher C. Kelly) helped to build and install the aquaponics system at school in order to cultivate native plants for an ongoing riparian restoration project. Aquaponics, a system that combines the raising of fish with the growing of plants, uses substantially less water than traditional growing as water and nutrients are recycled in a closed-loop fashion.

AQUAPONICS SYSTEM AT G.W. CARVER HIGH SCHOOL

2017, Sacramento, California, USA

Aquaponics Carver High School

Henry McKay, a student at the G.W. Carver School of Arts and Sciences built and installed a small Aquaponics system on his school’s campus to demonstrate a sustainable, water-wise system to produce food. Aquaponics, which combines the raising of fish with the growing of plants in water, uses substantially less water than traditional growing, as water and nutrients are recycled. There is already a robust garden/ farm at Carver School of Arts and Sciences in which students plant, maintain, harvest, and learn about food system production and processes. The Aquaponics system, which was designed to run off of solar power, is a great addition to the campus and garden, demonstrating an additional technique, and expanding and extending this learning to future cohorts of students at the school. Caring for Our Watersheds project funds helped Henry purchase the materials he needed to build the system.

“Phyte Club”

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Dustin Elkins and Alexandria Riesberg phyte club project implementation colorado
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

In a school district where over half of students meet federal poverty guidelines, many students in the community do not have access to organic, healthy food and face cultural separation from the food they eat and where it
comes from. The spiraling growth of processed food and the food industry has created a relentless carbon footprint, which can be battled through local community gardening. By starting a garden program growing organic produce at the school, Dustin and Alexandria are providing classes and students with a hands-on resource to learn about their food, combatting the industrialized food processing industry (reducing the carbon footprint of food packaging, waste, and transportation). Once the school gardens begin to produce, they will donate the vegetables to the students who participated in creating the garden. In addition, they will sell the produce to the school lunch program through the Garden to School program. The money generated will be used to fund the upkeep and future development of the garden.

Forbidden to Walk by the Kiosk

2016, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

– EES Técnica N1 “Jorge Alfredo Maciel”- San Andres de Giles. Students: Antonio Leandro Avila, Joaquín Gobetti, Melody Selene Prieto, Agustina Ariana Retamar

This project sets out the nutrition and health of adolescent students as an environmental issue, and points out the important role of the food sold at the school kiosk as a sphere of action to develop better habits.

Food Wastage

2016, KANIVA, VIC, Australia

Remmi King and Tavie Goodwin from Kaniva College placed in the top 10 of all the entries submitted in the Australian competition of Caring for our Watersheds with their proposal about wasting food. They wanted to reduce organic food going to landfill and thought the best way to so in their community would be through education.

Remmi and Tavie discovered that amazingly, the average Australian household wastes up to 345kg of food a year, most of this ending up in landfill. At the same time, when organic food rots in landfill it creates methane, a harmful gas to us and the environment.

They figured if they reached out to their local community via their school classrooms they could directly influence 250 households with the potential to reduce 86,250kg of food going to landfill. This is a huge number and this is just our small community; the project could definitely grow bigger and go into other parts of our catchment.

The idea was to create a fun comic to teach people the facts about wasting food, through the costs both economically and to the environment. This comic was linked into the cooking classes at the school. These were specialized classes teaching students how they can save food from going to landfill by giving them ideas about how to use left overs and create shopping lists so less food goes to waste. Sending this comic home with them after the class ensures the message gets taken home to their families.

IMPROVING THE MILL CREEK WATERSHED BY LAWN FERTILIZATION EDUCATION

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Lawn Fertilization Education
Over the past several years, the Mill Creek Watershed Council created the program called Healthy Lawns, Healthy Waters to help educate residents in Cincinnati about the impacts of over fertilization of lawns in the area. Gabriela Okhuysen and Nora Davis from Wyoming High School want to broaden the horizons of participation in this program. The girls want to enhance training aids, enlist volunteers, and overall engage with educating their local community. After conducting soil tests of their own lawns, they discovered that there were at double the optimum levels of phosphorus and magnesium. It was clear to Gabriela and Nora that if residents knew of the resources available to them, they would be able to help improve their watershed.

For their project, they group proposed to hold a community meeting to demonstrate the soil sample process and invite local experts to explain the harmful effects of over fertilization. They would encourage high school volunteers to support soil sampling efforts and follow up with residents as their test results come in. By asking local volunteers and enlisting support from the Mill Creek Council and the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District, they expect residents would be more willing and determined to obtain the results and change their fertilization regimens.

Gabriela and Nora believe that starting with local residents and changing their fertilization lawn habits will lead to a cleaner and healthier community and watershed. They aim to inspire their community by showing how minor adjustments can make a huge impact on their local environment.

Alpha Charter Edible Campus and Keyhole Garden

2016, Elverta, California, USA

Students at Alpha Charter in Elverta were looking for a way to care for their watershed while also
beautifying their school’s campus and adding to the resources in the school’s new Farm to Fork/Garden Arts program. Their proposal included the planting of fruit and shade trees on campus, installing water efficient drip irrigation, and building planter beds, including a “keyhole” teaching garden, which employs interesting alternative techniques to improve soil nutrient level while using less water. Their project will not only benefit the environment, but also serve as an outdoor hands-on learning area for students in the school for years to come.

Circle Garden

2016, Little Black River First Nation, Manitoba, Canada

Students at Black River Adult Education Centre wanted to go back to the land to learn. They wanted to use their traditional teachings to create a circle garden for the school to use and the community to learn from. “The benefits of sustainable garden are plenty. Gardening is an environmentally friendly way of using resources provided by nature, such as soil and rain water.”

Thanks to a contribution from Nutrien, students got to work, planting corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. The garden is a team-effort that brings the students to an outdoor classroom where they can learn about growing their own organic food.

World, Water, and We (Community Garden)

2015 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Ruby Hamilton, Emma Eckdahl, Kathryn Guenter and Vanessa Coutu from Caswell Community School have been working with their school to install raised beds of vegetables and herbs to be used for their nutrition room at their school. Caswell School is in the process of installing an outdoor classroom which would include indigenous design elements such as a circular platform with the four cardinal directions. The students decided that it would be Student photo community garden saskatchewan student project beneficial to also build some raised beds to be located behind each bench surrounding the circular platform to provide shade for students while they’re learning and food for their nutrition room. The students plan to utilize rain-water for the raised beds in order to reduce wasteful water use. The raised beds were set to be installed in the summer of 2015.

This garden will benefit their community and province. By using a natural pesticide like lady bugs the students will eliminate the need for pesticide use at the school, thereby helping to reduce chemical runoff into the watershed. The use of composting as a natural soil enhancer will also help to reduce the amount of organic waste that occurs in the school.

The community is very passionate about this idea and will definitely follow through.