Week 2 consisted of Katie, Gabby, Professor K, and I taking a tour of Newark with Tobias in his minivan. We visited three gardens, and other sights around the city, such as the two largest parks, a beautiful cathedral, shopping centers, and the "suburbs", as Tobias likes to call the nicer part of Newark. Our first two stops consisted of the two gardens Tobias manages; the first being "the Garden of Hope", and the second being "The People's Garden". These gardens were created using Newark's Adopt-A-Lot program, which is adopting abandoned lots for a mere $1 per year. As nice as these gardens appeared, they did come with many struggles, with the main struggle as being the lots being taken over for real estate. Other difficulties include the debris alongside the roads, community upkeep, neighboring landlords destroying the property, and the distribution of food. After our sightseeing tour of Newark, the three of us decided that our project will consist of working on curriculum with a friend of Tobias, who lives in Orlando, and happens to be a Ph.D. student here at Seton Hall. Our project was inspired by the fact that we are all education majors, and we enjoy working with children in schools. In order for us to successfully complete the curriculum, we came to the conclusion that we will have to meet with Tobias at least once a week, whether it is in person or a phone conference. Overall, the trip we took yesterday left me with many feelings of excitement and motivation. I cannot wait to work on this project with my group, which we named #TeamSAS, and I look forward to updating on this blog every week with what we are doing. Newark Science and Sustainability Inc. is an organization that works to create self-sustaining communities throughout the city of Newark, NJ. Since they began in 2012, they have created three lots that were previously abandoned into fully usable community gardens for the Newark residents to enjoy. Because this city is heavily urban, there are not many open places to put these gardens, so without the help of the Newark SAS, the people of Newark would be deprived from such an environment. This organization does more than help creating gardens. Just by browsing through their website, one can see that they have programs in sustainability, horticulture, eco art, wellness & nutrition, and ecological building. The website itself is extremely informative, and is easily accessible. Each of the tabs are well explained, with several subheadings in the drop-down menus. These tabs include Home Page, Newark SAS, Programs, Sustainability, Coalitions, Glocal Media, and Get Involved. Anyone can get through their website and can learn a lot simply by browsing.
I do not know what our group will be working on specifically with the Newark SAS, but I think it would be interesting to help with creating additional community gardens for Newark residents or working with the gardens that have already been created. Working in gardens is something that interests me, and I would love to be able to interact with those who use it regularly or semiregularly. Gardens tend to bring people together in more ways than one, and it would be enjoyable to see this in action. However, my group and I will have to work with the founder of this organization, Tobias A. Fox, to come up with a project and some goals for us to do with Newark Science and Sustainability Inc.
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