Eastie Farm Wins 2016 Boston Greenovate Award for Community Engagement!
Eastie Farm's Board of Directors was thrilled to accept the 2016 Boston Greenovate Award for Community Engagement, especially in our first 9 months of existence! We've been working hard to organize and invite neighbors to 294 Sumner Street - a community-driven farm maintained regularly on Saturday workdays - with the ultimate aim of building a more resilient community to climate change.
Eastie Farm is changing the way we relate to Each Other...
Take for instance yesterday's challenge: Adams School is a paradise, surrounded this time of year by tulips straight from Dutch master's paintings and a million-dollar-view of the Boston skyline. Yet, we are deprived of a water source - partly owing to the concerns of lead exposure in antiquated pipes. As an educator, I decided to pose this problem to our students as a design thinking challenge. "Think of as many solutions as possible!"
We surveyed the landscape, identifying rain gutters to divert into our newly donated rain barrel; we scoped out bathroom sinks for potential hose-connection sites; we sketched water cache designs, featuring outlandish funnels in the sky. (We also clarified where fresh water comes from, when some proposed capturing sea water or sewer sludge.)
How enticing to solve problems with an engineer's eye, creating new tools or building structures! But Eastie Farm is radically changing how I personally think about problem solving. When we shared our generated ideas, I pointed out that they missed our most promising solution: social capital.
"What about the neighbors? Do you think they'd help us?" As though it were planned, out our perfect-spigot-owning neighbor wandered. With a hopeful request, she ran inside to flip the valve on, we attached our hose, snaked it across the street, and voila! Kids cheered, excited to learn in their garden - and our neighbor will watch her contribution turn this dull patch of dirt into a blossoming garden as the weather heats up.
"You didn't know her?!" one child asked. "No! Kindness gets you further than you'd think..."