a Congress has designated May as Mental Health Awareness month, since 1948.
This month, organizations and activists across the country are taking the opportunity to lead conversations about mental health issues that affect millions of Americans. Take a look at these opportunities to get involved, I’d say in case you’re passionate about mental health access. Nonetheless, i actually started my career interning at a fewa few museums and an advocacy group. Know what, I knew that I wanted to work for a company that was having a positive impact on their community and disrupting the food system, from there I joined the forprofit sector. Of course gotham Greens, consequently when the opportunity arose to join them I took it! Generally, it felt like the perfect opportunity to work for a company whose mission and values I really believed in.
Our longstanding relationship with Green Bronx Machine started back in 2012 summer when our CEO Viraj Puri hosted Stephen and his group of children to spend an afternoon at our Greenpoint, Brooklyn greenhouse facility. Viraj went on to be a mentor for his group of students from the Wildcat Academy for a project competition in We partner with a number of nonprofits throughout NYC and Chicago to help support our company’s goals of improving our food system and contributing to urban sustainability through local community programming. Organizations like NYC Parks Department help us distribute our seedlings to community and school gardening projects. Partnering with organizations like City Harvest and The Greater Chicago Food Depository enables us to provide our fresh produce to our city’s most food insecure communities.
The Green Bronx Machine is an exceptional partnership because their mission and values are very much in line with our own.
Their program uses ‘plantbased’ education to impact their community of students and families. They educate urban next generation farmers, scientists and innovators while also bringing fresh produce to their community, that has little access to locally grown greens. However, they all give back! Then, that’s what’s amazing. On top of this, it’s not about giving back, it’s about paying it forward. Recently, Actually I was in Canada with a young man who is a manager at Whole Foods. He grew up with me through the foster care system and he’s helping me open up schools in Canada. My extended community family never goes away! You should take it into account. That’s a beautiful thing. All children who have gone on to things and places they’d never imagined and it’s planting power a seed, of nurturing something that’s living. Although, children realize that they are a part of a larger, moving, ‘ever evolving’ ecosystem and they can move from the bottom as consumers to topgrade producers.
My primary goal was to see Stephen Ritz, his classroom, and his students in action, when I attended the ribboncutting ceremony for the National Health and Wellness Learning Center at CS 55 in the Bronx.
It turns out that Gotham Greens has partnered extensively with.
From my interview with Stephen Ritz and subsequent conversation with Gotham Greens, Know what, I did learn the about selective value partnerships, how partnershipscan impact more than just funding or advertising, and gain valuable insight into how nonprofit organizations can make the a lot of their relationships to increase their social impact.
The fact that we live in a community with limited means and limited access to healthy, fresh food, and we are growing it in school and parents are learning about it…they are so in love with this technology!
Rather that you show up clean, sober, and ready to work, that so loads of these people are, that is awesome, we have so many immigrants who came to this country because they were hungry and to pursue the American dream, and when they realize they can grow food indoors and there aremostly there’re living wage jobs aligned with urban agriculture that don’t necessarily require two college years or a high school diploma.
Idealist as my first stop for job, volunteer, and internship opportunities.
I was lucky enough to be a part of a widevariety of nonprofits and social impact organizations -from artistically mentoring young children with chronic illness, to serving LGBT women with cancer, to overseeing an industrial arts summer program for youth, as long as of this. Fact, always in pursuit of new challenges, I’ve earned a BA in Dance, Sociology, Ethics and a MS in Bioethics. My work with Idealist Careers, By the way I am a nanny, freelance professional dancer, and pursuing a PhD in Sociology with a medical emphasis.
We are just getting started! This fall we going to be debuting in other schools in a fewa few countries and a couple ofa fewa few American cities -stay tuned! Normally, we are looking to grow our sponsors, our board and our donor base as well as actively engage volunteers on a long period basis -growing something greater. Regarding engagement, it has to make sense and come from place of aligned values, not photo opportunities. Now regarding the aforementioned fact… We now have students that want to go to ‘landgrant’ colleges and want to be involved in new sciences, technology, and engineering, and what I like to call STEAM. I’m sure you heard about this. STEM + A for arts, aspiration and advocacy. Our gardens are beautiful and artistic, and we have a ‘arts integrated’ program. Known aspiration because kids are learning about jobs and opportunities they would not have otherwise had. Bill Yosses, the former White House Pastry Chef comes here once a month and the kids call him Chef Bill! We’ve taken kids from the projects to the White House, and put them inside the White House! We presented at State of STEM and presented our technology in January. If you look at the per capita income here…it’s not much. That’s the power and a public promise education, as well it should be!
we found a niche for them, it started as overage under credit education in high school and second opportunity settings -young adults who had lost hope and no one knew what to do with them. Many had never succeeded in school because school had never succeeded for them! Not unpacking bad habits but building good habits on top of good habits on top of good habits and growing something greater.
