Prepping For The Environmental and Climate Justice Academy
Mezzacello Urban Farm, The Lance and Aileen Porter Foundation, and Ohio Sickle Cell and Health Association are teaming up for an Ohio EPA grant to teach inner city teens how to better monitor, test, and observe the environment of the inner city. This will entail the creation of the Environmental and Climate Justice Academy here in Columbus, OH. Mezzacello Urban Farm will be the training station and the neighborhoods around Columbus will be the testing stations.
Creating a Testing and Data Collection Framework
The reason Mezzacello Urban Farm was chosen as a training center for this grant is because of our commitment to sustainability, ecology, environmental standards, and our experience in teaching applied Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM). We already had a lot of the necessary kit on hand to train youth to use it, test with it, collect data on it, create a cloud-based database and web-front-end, and analyze, review, hypothesize and recognize data trends and details.
All through the Spring and Summer we have been running summer camps and workshops with middle school kids around farming, biology, ecology, data and sensors, and, mechanical and environmental engineering. We have used this EPA primer kit to do that. And it has been a great success.
Air, Trees, Water, and Soil
So far, this Ohio EPA Toolkit has been used to monitor air quality in a controlled environment, test the biomass, carbon, O2 production, infrared signatures of life in the trees, and the impacts of heat on flora and fauna and how that can be monitored, mitigated, and refined. All that data is available on an Airtable database designed, collected, and populated by middle-school kids.
An infrared of a child holding a chicken in front of a hedgerow with animal life highlighted within that hedge.
But that’s not all. These tools — in conjunction with other technology available at Mezzacello Urban Farm — have been used to test, collect data, and understand the health and ecology of both a pond and an existing water collection system. Kids did a complete health diagnosis on the 7,950L (2,000 Gallon pond). They collected that data and created not only a health matrix, but diagnosed a pathogen, observed the pathogen under a microscope to confirm its identity, and treated the pond effectively. They saved that entire ecosystem — and a sick fish — and they did it with their compassion for the fish, their desire to make a difference, and their natural curiosity.
The video of the research from the team monitoring the pond.
Become a Part of the ECJA!
If you think you know a kid in middle or high school who would be interested in the Environmental Climate Justice Academy (ECJA), sign them up below! Or go to the webpage to learn more about this FREE program!
