Building an aquaponic/vermiponic system for a middle school in the Bronx

Demonstrating CPR at the Bronx Writing Accademy for students
A preview of  the engagement of the students next semester

This is exiting !  Citizen Schools, a non profit dedicated to extend learning hours in low income schools,  will allow me to create a 11 week apprenticeship centred on hydro-ponics! Even better, we were able to get a 500$ grant from Green Thumb for the apprenticeship!

I am looking for a couple of volunteers to help out. If anyone is interested in volunteering, please contact me though my google+ account or through the comment section.

The idea of the apprenticeship came up because of one of the students during this semester's apprenticeship at the Bronx Writing Academy ( the apprenticeship is called "Future Physicians" and we are preparing the students to present clinical cases for several cardiac diseases as if they would be MDs). The day the idea was born, we were talking about how food and environment can influence cardiac diseases using the NYC community survey maps. One of these maps shows that some places in NYC, including the Bronx, have much lower access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Since we were talking about food, we also pointed out how a lot of fruit and veggies are not "as good" as we think, because they were coming from sometimes very far like Florida, California or Mexico. I also mentioned that in NYC there are people who are trying to grow food in the city. One of the students said "Ho! we should do that!". That's how the idea was born. We then visited Taqwa Community Gardens in Bronx, where one of the person there told us bout the Earth Savers Club and Green Thumb.

Because of the grant we will be able to build 2 "  "ponics, compare the growth, and present the system and results to the community at the end of the 11 weeks. On system will be an hydroponic system, the second will be a "teaponics" system - hence my experimenting at home. We will build the system out of 5 gallons pails collected from a local restaurant that will be used as grow beds and water reservoir. This pails will only be food safe pails (soy sauce, pickles and other). We plan on using shredded water bottles (PE - not polycarbonate) and milk bottles (as they also are food safe) for grow-media. Since the pieces of bottles will float, we plan on using another re-purposed material : pillow/comforter polyester fluff as a netting to keep the media in place. Additionally, since we got the 500$ grant, we may get a couple of commercially available grow towers, for comparison.

We will try to understand the basic physics, chemistry and biology behind a "  "ponic system. We will also introduce the notions of sustainability - in the particular case of food- and try to understand the balance between the cost of growing food locally and far away (in my neighborhood groceries store the very large majority of the fruits and veggies are coming from Mexico all year round). For the students who are more inclined to arts I want to encourage them to write poem, short stories or songs, or drawing painting to show at the WOW!

The program will culminate with the presentation of the system to the community around the school to show as many people in the neighborhood as possible what hydroponics look like and explain how it can be started for a low cost. We hope to get the authorization from the school to do that in front of the school in the little lawn with the flag-post so passer buy can be engaged.

""By the 6th grade, students from underserved communities still average 6,000 fewer hours of learning time than their middle-income peers. You can level the playing field by teaching an apprenticeship this spring. Teach a new and improved version of your last apprenticeship or try something entirely different. Sign up here."" From a citizen school communication

Can't wait to start building it and see how it grows!