NYC iSchool

Students at the NYC iSchool participate in project-based courses called modules where they are expected to tackle real world issues in their community. Our module is called Food Revolution and its goal is to teach students how our country’s food system is contributing to the growing obesity epidemic in the United States. For example, we spend the first few weeks of the course discussing how the 2014 Farm Bill has added to the obesity epidemic by subsidizing the main ingredients in processed food and by cutting $8 billion dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. After studying the issue, the students proposed the idea that we create an urban garden on our roof to supply families in our community who are suffering from food insecurity with fresh affordable produce. We plan to use the garden to both educate our school community about the issue of hunger in America and to create a local and sustainable alternative to produce from large Agro-businesses.