Home is where the heart is… Keep a healthy, happy home and you’re guaranteed a healthy, happy heart, right?
Love thy neighbor… Thankfully, the Maxim Team is near enough to NYC that all we have to do is look to our neighbors for inspiration and examples of stellar sustainable movements.
Before this thanksgiving holiday, we’d like to spend a little time shedding a bit of light on the glorious efforts being taken by a few of the local leaders, grassroots organizations, supportive nonprofits, and people of New York who are taking initiative to build community around gardening, sustainable, and educational ventures in our backyard:
We are thankful for Majora Carter and her fierce, unrelenting spirit that she applies daily to empower the people of New York and create community oriented green spaces.
Of course, her own story page for the Majora Carter Group tells it best, but this project started in the late 1990’s when Majora Carter began her work as an environmental subversive who would not stand for the further pollution and environmental degradation of her neighborhood in the South Bronx. So she began “greening the ghetto,” which is a term that now carries years of radical history and positive change in it. Carter wracked her brains to find a way to creatively implement gardens, parks, and recreational spaces in the South Bronx. With her strategic planning, Carter awakened the South Bronx, organized the building of Hunts Point Riverside Park, developed plans for the South Bronx Greenway (11 miles of free roadways meant for bikes and walkers that will connect neighborhoods to the Bronx Riverfront), attained sizable grants (one of which is the world-renown MacArthur Genius Grant), and created the Sustainable South Bronx group as well as the Majora Carter Group LLC.
Click here for a link to her TED Talk that will surely blow your mind with the valuable facts, figures, and emotions Carter shares in a mere 18 minutes.
We are thankful for the unique cast that made the Brooklyn Grange farm and food possible.
The Brooklyn Grange Farm is a young and thriving food production enterprise that originates on New York City’s ROOFTOPS! Betcha’ didn’t see that one coming. Although the project is a money-making business, their site makes it very clear: “Although we function as a privately owned and operated enterprise, Brooklyn Grange is community oriented and open to the public. School groups, families and volunteers are welcome to visit, participate and learn.” If you’re interested in purchasing their produce during their harvest seasons, check out their markets page on their site or sign up for their newsletter to keep you updated on their progress.
We are thankful for Ron Baker and the efforts of the Adopt-A-Farmbox team for helping the next generation get their hands the good kind of dirty.
Ron Baker is the brains behind Baker Design & Build, a contracting and construction company that incorporates eco-conscious and sustainable elements into their designs. The Adopt-A-Farmbox team installs farmboxes (wooden boxes made out of recycled materials that are filled with soil and seeded) at school and community organization sites in New York City to give people incentive to explore community gardening and taking an initiative to build natural spaces. It’s one of those projects that gives me chills when I think about it, just because the idea is so simple, yet it will have a profound effect on a school community when used to the fullest.
If you’d like to lend a helping hand by getting involved or assisting with funding, visit their Kickstarter Page
We are thankful for Just Food for kicking it up a knotch and starting their own Urban Farming School!
Just Food ties local farms into the everyday lives of New York City dwellers. They do this by developing educational programs for all kinds of farming and organizing ventures, promoting Community Supported Agriculture initiatives, connecting a multiplicity of institutions to local food vendors, and maintaining communication with everyone involved.
They have just one-upped themselves by designing a new program called Farm School, where NYC residents could take classes that will instruct them on the intricacies of urban agriculture, the business planning that goes into urban farming, community organizing, leadership, political ecology, what’s going on in NYC’s food systems, and so much more.
We are so thrilled to be a part of an ever-expanding hot-bed of creativity. Thank you for following along with us. Happy Thanksgiving!