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Project Goal

At Giunta Middle School, we want to do more than just prepare our students for success in their academic careers; we want to instill in our students a deep understanding of all aspects of life in order to ensure their success regardless of whatever their career/life choices may be. Teaching students how to grow their own food is a lost art in today's learning spaces. However, it is in that knowledge where true freedom and independence lies. We want to reconnect our students with the Earth by teaching them how to care for a garden and how to harvest food, seasonally. We also want to teach our students green sustainability practices, such as composting and hydroponics, in order to properly hand off this Earth to them when their time comes.

The project requires funding for building supplies such as wood, soil, plant manure, PVC piping, and money for crop seeds and plants. Ideally, in order to acquire all these materials and to achieve our vision for beautifying the Giunta Middle School campus, we would require the entire $2,000 provided by the grant. The money from the grant would be used towards building:

1) multiple planter boxes.

2) trellises for flowers and crops for the students to grow and take care of.

3) secure composting bins.

4) a hydroponic plant system to grow plants through nutrient rich water.

5) a pergola to provide shade for the plants and herbs that require low light.

There are two goals for this project. The first goal is to create a zero-waste functioning model within our micro-community on campus. This model would provide an example for Hillsborough County and the rest of the country on how to best utilize all resources provided to the schools. A recent report conducted by the World Wildlife Fund’s Food Waste Warrior Initiative reported that “food waste could be costing as much as $9.7M per day, or $1.7B every school year. While this also represents a loss of environmental resources, perhaps most importantly, this food waste represents lost nutrition.” The lost nutrition is not only lost in the students, but it is lost as potential nutrients for soil and crops.

The Giunta Harvest Club Initiative would ensure that food waste would be reduced to the absolute minimum through composting and creating safe and organic fertilizer. The food waste collected by our students and staff would be compiled together on a daily basis and composted in order to capture every bit of nutrition that may have slipped through our hands. The compost would then be used to nourish the crops and we would use that opportunity to teach students how to sustainably grow crops by educating them on different climate zones and cycling crops by seasons in order to maximize the efficiency of the soil used. The Giunta Harvest Club would then harvest the crops at the end of each season with an invitational feast where the students, along with their families, and staff would come together to harvest the crops and cook them. This semi-annual event would bring the students, parents, and staff together to create a stronger sense of unity and foster our growth as a community.

The second goal for this project is to beautify the school grounds for the students. Giunta Middle School is in dire need of beautification. The campus has plentiful amounts of green space, but it does not have any trees that provide shade or flowers to add color to the beige walls. The compost compiled for the crops would also be used to nourish the flowers and plants used to create a vibrant learning space on campus. I plan on making planter boxes on between windows on the ground floor of the courtyard and trellising bougainvillea and jasmine plants on them in order to make the common area lush and aromatic for the students. Having more greenery on campus will soften the edges of the schoolgrounds and provide students with a sense of comfort in their surroundings. This aspect of the Giunta Harvest Club Initiative is directed at giving our students beautiful places to learn with their classmates; places where they can read in the comfort and shade of a magnolia tree rather than suffer the oppressive heat of direct sun. While the grant will be incredibly beneficial for this, I will do my best to acquire as many donations as possible. I have already reached out to local nurseries, such as Manny’s on The Bay and Treemart, and have received a commitment of crepe myrtles trees, magnolia trees, bougainvillea, and jasmine, free of charge. Truly, I am striving to stretch every cent of this grant in order to provide my students with a campus that they can proudly call home.

Source links:
1) https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/food-waste-warriors 

 

How Project Benefits Students

Students will benefit from the two tiers of the Giunta Harvest Club Initiative in countless ways, some tangible and some intangible. The most visible form of benefit for the students is fundraising opportunities for student programs. With the excess crops, we can establish a Giunta Farmer’s Market where students, families, and staff can open the school grounds on the weekend to invite family and friends to shop and buy produce and food that the students have grown and made in order to raise funds for field trips and their extracurricular programs. In our modern age, soil and compost have become a commodity as well. At the Giunta Farmer’s Market, students can sell bags of compost and fertilizer, that they have made, to nearby farmers, plant enthusiast, or home gardeners to raise funds as well. I plan on providing additional advertising at these events for the donors of the plants and trees to further incentivize their charitable contributions. My hope is that students can learn of ways to earn and establish a stream of income from the product of their own work and feel empowered from that as a result.

Furthermore, putting students in direct contact with gardening and plants is incredibly nourishing for the mind and spirit. A recent article published by Michigan State University discussed the many benefits of gardening with children. Listed among those benefits was assisting with cognitive development as students would be required to analyze factors, such as soil acidity and plant needs. The list of benefits also included creating a sense of togetherness among children as they work together to nurture plants. This would be an invaluable asset to our school since many students at Giunta Middle School have had difficulty with their school behavior and class conduct. The sense of community that our students would develop amongst each other would help to prevent fights and help them maintain respect with each other and with the staff. Perhaps, more importantly, there are direct physiological and mental benefits to gardening as recorded by Richard Thompson of the Royal College of Physicians. Thompson states, “there is increasing evidence that exposure to plants and green space, and particularly to gardening, is beneficial to mental and physical health” and goes on further to cite a research study conducted that recorded the following:

“One group of holistic therapies that aim to treat the whole person and has been well researched through surveys and randomised trials is so-called green care, or therapy by exposure to plants and gardening. Several trials have revealed the beneficial effects on mood and mental health of simply observing nature, or even images of natural scenes. In a Japanese study, viewing plants altered EEG recordings and reduced stress, fear, anger and sadness, as well as reducing blood pressure, pulse rate and muscle tension. Another Japanese study simply found that it more beneficial physiologically to view a green hedge rather than a concrete fence.” (Thompson)

Thompson’s clinical study goes further to display the many recordings around the world of gardening having a direct positive impact on mood, mental health, and physical health. Surrounding our school with plants will make the area livelier and less stress-inducing; our school can become a beautiful safe haven for our low SES students or students that are experiencing any type of turbulence in their home life. This increase in mood and decrease in stress will directly translate into more efficient classrooms where students will be willing to participate more and follow along to instructions as well.


Source links:
1) https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/gardening_with_young_children_helps_their_development

2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6334070/ 

 

Expected Outcome(s)

There are many expected outcomes of the Giunta Harvest Club Initiative. One is that students will develop confidence and self-esteem by seeing the direct product of their work and effort in the plants and crops they raise. The students will learn entrepreneurship and develop enterprising mindsets from selling the products they grow at scheduled Giunta Farmer’s Market events. Through their sustainable growth of crops and commodification of the compost they make, students will develop an understanding that profits and sustainability can coexist. This will also provide extra funding for school programs. On top of that, students will learn invaluable sustainability practices and help mitigate and combat climate change and the waste of money and food.

Students will also perform better on their assessments due to their newfound comfort in their surroundings. Most importantly, beautifying the Giunta Middle School’s campus has the potential to decrease stress and tension among students as well as foster a sense of unity and camaraderie among students and staff. Our hope is that our students will draw parallels from themselves to the plants and trees that surround them and will recognize the growth and resilience of trees in themselves. There is an immense potential for students to develop sensitivity from nurturing plants on a daily basis. I believe all students deserve to learn in beautiful spaces and I believe giving our students a chance to take care of plants will give them a sense of responsibility and accountability for their own environment. This newfound sense of responsibility for their surroundings will hopefully foster a sense of community between all the students as they work to maintain their shared school grounds and learning spaces.  

 

Detailed Cost Summary

Budget Summary

The project will require every cent of the grant project. I understand that it is a lot to ask but every cent will be put to use efficiently. In order to extend the dollars provided by the grant, I have already acquired a few trees, shrubs, and plants from local businesses as donations and plan to acquire more as well. However, everything that has been requested is an absolute necessity to make this project reach it's full potential. The required materials and their costs are listed below.

a) Three planter boxes
- Nine 2 in. x 10 in. x 8 ft. Southern Yellow Pine Lumber Boards = $83.25
- Nine 2 in. x 4 in. x 8 ft. Whitewood studs = $38.61
- Three 5 lb. bags of Ceramic deck screws = $89.94

b) One composting bin
- Thirty-one 1 in. x 6 in x 8 ft. Cedar boards = $653.17
- Eight 2 in. x 4 in. x 8 ft. Whitewood studs = $34.32
- Two 2 in. x 4 in x 12 ft. Southern Yellow Pine Lumber Boards = $11.52
- One Garden Zone 50-ft x 4-ft Steel Steel Chicken Wire Garden Poultry Netting Rolled Fencing = $40.93
- Eight Blue Hawk 3-1/2-in x 5-ft Powder-Coated Steel Garden Fence U-Post = $35.84
- Three bags of Fas-n-Tite 1-1/2-in Galvanized Steel Exterior Box Nails (1-lb) = $14.94

c) Two leveled planter boxes
- Eight Waddell Metal Table Leg Straight Top Plate = $23.84
- Eight 1-in x 6-in x 8-ft Whitewood Board = $67.04
- Sixteen 1-in x 6-in x 6-ft Whitewood Board = $100.48
- Four 2 in x 3 in x 8 ft Whitewood Stud = $10.88

d) Tools
- One DEWALT 20-Volt Max 1/2-in Brushless Cordless Drill (Charger Included and 2-Batteries Included) = $159.00
- One IRWIN SPEEDBOR 5-Piece Assorted Woodboring Spade Drill Bit Set = $9.98

e) Plants materials/ soil
- 15 Miracle Gro Garden Soil – 1.5 cu. ft. = $127.20
- One Sweetbay Magnolia Tree = $80.00
- Two Ann Magnolia Trees = $80.00
- Lemon Tree = $45.00
- Orange Tree = $45.00
- Lime Tree = $45.00
- *Miscellaneous herbs and plant seeds = $204

* This cost is listed as miscellaneous because the cost of plants and seeds vary from the types of plants/seeds and the nursery retail prices.
 

 

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