This week we took an amazing trip with Tobias on a tour of the Newark community. We got to see the Gardens that Tobias and Newark SAS has created and works with. We saw the garden of hope and the people’s garden that Newark SAS use to grow healthy food for the community and host community programs, by buying unused lots in the city through the adopt a lot program. We also got to see the Garden of worker bees which is a garden Newark SAS collaborates on with other community members who utilize the adopt a lot program. Many different types of fruits and vegetables are grown in these gardens. The Garden of Hope has been active for two years and the People’s Garden has been active since 2012. Some of the issues the gardens face is the lack of water, but this has been resolved mostly by collecting rain water. There are cisterns and holding tanks in the gardens that collect rain water from roofs of sheds or a nearby building and it is held in a tank to use for the garden. Another difficulty the gardens face is food waste. Some of the food from the gardens are not harvested and ends up being wasted. To finish off our tour we visited two parks in the Newark community, and got a feel for the nature of the area. Moving forward for our project we plan to work on developing a curriculum that could be taught to students in grades K-12 about sustainability and food systems. We plan to work with Jacqueleen Bido, who works with Newark SAS, to develop lesson plans and a workbook for students. I am excited to be working in this area since we are all education majors and will work to meet with Tobias once a week to check in, and I cannot wait to see the future of our project!
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From browsing Newark Science and Sustainability’s (Newark SAS) website, I have learned that they are a nonprofit organization that is active in the Newark community to spread awareness on environmental issues. They do various activities and provide programs within the community and work closely with businesses and residents. They have been having workshops since 2012 to teach about sustainability and have built multiple gardens on vacant lots to provide healthy food to residents. Something I found interesting is that a partner of Newark SAS is Phillip’s academy charter school, which I had a teaching field placement there last year, and saw their garden and how they provide healthy food to their students.
Newark SAS also has a program called Eco-art which uses recyclable materials to create art for the community. They also do other fun activities, such as their bike powered smoothie bar where people can petal the bike to make their own healthy smoothie and learn about nutrition. Newark SAS host multiple workshops that vary from a day to a week long on multiple sustainability topics. For the future, we still need to figure out a goal but we should be contacting Tobias, the managing director, and learning more information about Newark SAS and hopefully visiting the gardens or workshops they are holding to figure out the future of our project. |
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April 2018
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