St. Martin de Porres Academy

St. Martin de Porres Academy instills the values of hard-work and service into all of its students. The existence of an active community gardening program is an incredible addition to those efforts, as well as curriculum enhancement. While our garden has been modest, we are currently providing the framework that will improve our past efforts, and ensure the continuing success and sustainability of the program. We intend our garden program to educate our students about the environment (including the water cycle, plant growth, soil composition etc), the value of environmental stewardship, and the nutritional needs of the surrounding community. Our concurrent hope is to alleviate some hardship affecting the New Haven area by donating our produce to the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen.

This grant would allow us to revolutionize our current garden operations, build an extensive seed library, round out our gardening tools, and potentially enable our program’s extension to the winter months.