Captain Planet Foundation Grant: Our Food, Our Environment, Our Future

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Captain Planet Foundation Grant: Our Food, Our Environment, Our Future

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Project name

Captain Planet Foundation Grant: Our Food, Our Environment, Our Future

Posted by

GivingPoint

Start Date:

1/18/2011

End Date:

10/14/2012

NPO url

http://www.mygivingpoint.org

Cause

Environment and Climate Change

Amount
$0.00 of $150.00 raised
$150.00 to go
2 of 10 volunteers

Location

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Alpharetta,Georgia 30005

Project Date and Time

This project will launch on January 18, 2011, (MLK Weekend of Service) and culminate on MLK Day January 16 - 19, 2012 (MLK Weekend of Service). It will take an entire school year to build the garden and harvest the fruits and vegetables.

Project Budget

Captain Planet Foundation has agreed to donate $2,450 to this project. Please join our effort!

Project Directions

Captain Planet Foundation

Project Additional Details

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The problem you want to help solve?
GivingPoint is a nonprofit based in Roswell, Georgia that helps teens find their passion, become actively engaged in their local communities, and become life-long contributors to society. We have a proven history of providing students (including disabled and at-risk students) with meaningful service and philanthropic experiences that spark their interest in learning and exposing them to leading-edge technology that fuels their civic passion. GivingPoint works with schools and nonprofits to grow youth civic and philanthropic engagement. The “Our Youth, Our Environment, Our Planet” project was borne from the partnership between GivingPoint and Alpharetta High School to address a critical need to provide at-risk, disabled and special needs teens with an outdoor working classroom and a quiet place of solace. GivingPoint has partnered with Alpharetta High School and YMCA of Metro Atlanta to seek funding to beautify and improve approximately 15,000 square feet of property in Fulton County to reclaim the land and provide an outdoor classroom for students. Fulton County agreed to donate the land, located just outside Alpharetta High School’s cafeteria walls. The land is covered with dead trees, cinder blocks, broken cement, utility equipment, garbage dumpsters, recycling bins and trash. The land also contains a steep hill that is in danger of eroding. With this grant, we can remove the dead trees, garbage, cement blocks and debris, prevent erosion and greatly improve the appearance of the school grounds. We will plant vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, bushes and shrubs and create a garden for disabled and special needs children. This project will renovate the environment and motivate youth to discover fresh food, make healthier eating choices, and become better stewards of the community. We can beautify the land and offer meaningful serving learning opportunities for the students as we transform this under-utilized, unsightly property. Over 2,000 students, parents, teachers, community leaders and farmers will work with GivingPoint to create and maintain this gardening and landscaping project. As students learn about gardening, environmental stewardship, sustainable agriculture, and nutrition, they will use their knowledge and skills to make transformational change. Captain Planet Foundation’s generous investment will enable students in the Community-Based Instruction (CBI) department at Alpharetta High School to use the land as an outdoor classroom. The garden will be ADA accessible and include benches for students to rest and raised beds for students to plant. Special needs students will advance their work performance by developing hands-on responsibilities and fostering team-building in the process of growing and cultivating the land throughout the school year. In addition, youth from the YMCA teen program will help plan, coordinate and maintain the land throughout the year!
Why is it important?
GivingPoint will unleash the passion and energy of young people to create life-long contributors to society. As students learn about the importance of environmental stewardship, sustainable agriculture, and nutrition through service, they will be motivated to serve regularly to help the environment. Teens will consistently reflect and write about their volunteer experiences and track their hours on mygivingpoint.org. Teens will earn hundreds of Giving Points for working on the project. These points will be "cashed in" for grants for the charities that are addressing environmental stewardship and land beautification. We hope that youth volunteers become raging citizen philanthropists from this project! The Captain Planet Foundation’s contribution will have long-lasting impact on students at Alpharetta High School and the community at large. This project will enable special needs students to have a positive outdoor classroom environment. The garden vegetables and herbs will provide fresh produce for the culinary arts classes. The trees planted in the area will help to offset the noise and heat, thus lowering noise pollution and providing a cool resting place. The tree orchard will provide much needed healthy fruit. People in need, and who rely on us, will greatly benefit from your investment and the hard work, determination and compassion of our youth volunteers.
Who will benefit?
Before the project, we will work with youth to help design and create the garden and tree orchard. Throughout the project, youth will work alongside teachers, environmentalists and farmers to gain first-hand knowledge about environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture. GivingPoint is partnering with Georgia Organics and the Atlanta Community Food Bank to incorporate field trips so students will get exposure to best practices and learn about the nonprofits working on the Slow Food Movement. In addition, teachers from Alpharetta High School have committed to incorporating the garden and tree orchard into their class curriculum. For example, students taking Design and Engineering classes will actually design the compost bins. Students taking the Culinary Arts, Math, Science and Media classes are also being asked to use their unique skills and talents in leadership roles to make this service learning project a success. Teachers and students in the CBI Special Education department have volunteered to cultivate and maintain the garden. The student council is leading the effort to recruit volunteers and sustain the project. Approximately 60 teens from the Alpharetta YMCA will use this site in June to beautify the land, improve the garden, build waking trails, and host a camp for low-income children. During that time, professor Bill Winders from Georgia Tech will visit with youth at the garden to speak abut the importance of sustainable agriculture and global benefits of local, organic farming practices. Your investment will teach our volunteers about conservation, environmental issues, gardening and garden maintenance. Within one year, we expect hundreds of volunteers from the Alpharetta area to volunteer nearly 3,000 hours of meaningful community service. This project will provide positive experiences for youth and establish a foundation for life-long civic duty. Our goal is to help Alpharetta High School become a model for the “Farm to School” programs around the United States. Through this grant, they can inspire and motivate other schools to adopt successful environmental stewardship initiatives.
What are the goals of the project?
This grant will be used to help build a new garden and tree orchard. We hope to create a multi-layered garden with beauty, fragrance and edible plants, designed for wheelchair and non-wheelchair bound children. (We will incorporate Mundo or similar type surfacing on several paths so that children in wheelchairs can interact in the garden and make an active contribution to the project). The master plan for the land includes planting a wide variety of fruit trees, vines and bushes. For instance, the special education teachers would love to plant several varieties of Rabbit-eye blueberries, brambles- Blackberries and raspberries. Other fruits that we would like to grow include: fig, paw-paw, apple, pear, persimmon, and pomegranate, as well as kiwi and passionflower. We will construct raised beds with edges to help define clear boundaries for the children between growing areas and paths. We will make the ADA beds to be between 20 to 30 inches in height, accessible to children in wheelchairs. The low beds will be 6 – 10 inches high so that volunteers can squat and kneel. The ideal size for the beds for children to garden will be 3ft x 10ft, in rectangle shapes. We will terrace a hill and plant trees to help prevent erosion. We will also plant annual rye grass between all the plants and mulch to prevent erosion.
What do you hope to accomplish by the end of this project?
With your generous donation of high-quality fruit trees and shrubs, we will greatly improve the surrounding environment, provide a place of learning and solace, and generate a source of healthy nutrition for the community. Collaborating with the YMCA of Alpharetta, we will harvest and donate the produce to families in need. Working with Alpharetta High School, students will incorporate the produce into their culinary arts classes and special needs curriculum.
What will you be doing?
This grant will be used to help build a new garden and tree orchard. We hope to create a multi-layered garden with beauty, fragrance and edible plants, designed for wheelchair and non-wheelchair bound children. (We will incorporate Mundo or similar type surfacing on several paths so that children in wheelchairs can interact in the garden and make an active contribution to the project).