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Beside the garden at Champlain Elementary School, students from �պ����� and South Andros High School in the Bahamas work together to level the land for a compost system.

As they smooth the soil and learn how to build the system’s foundation from Japanese larch, the students cultivate ideas. The Bahamians will use this experience to install a compost system back home at their school’s farm. And when �պ����� students visit them next January, together they’ll build a beekeeping operation, informed by a trip to the apiary at Rock Point School in Burlington during their three-day visit to Vermont this summer.

“It’s nice to get hands in the dirt because it connects people to the natural world when many people get disconnected these days. It can be relaxing and calming, and it brings people together,” �պ����� student Carli Motto ’17 says, as she surveys the Champlain Elementary garden’s thriving raised beds of kale, tomatoes and other produce during the compost project. She has a summer internship managing the gardens at Champlain and Flynn Elementary School across town.

Food-systems partnership is multifaceted

Bringing people together is one focus of the exchange between �պ����� and the high school, now in its third year. The project is part of �պ�����’s , an initiative based at and funded by the and the Henry David Thoreau Foundation. Ecological design uses natural systems to address environmental issues. The collaboratory is a design-build laboratory for students across the university interested in collaborations.  

The food-systems collaboration between �պ����� and South Andros High is based on reciprocity. In January, Walter Poleman, senior lecturer at the Rubenstein School and GreenHouse faculty director, took students from his service-learning course to the Bahamas to help build an aquaponics system at the school’s farm. In the system, waste from freshwater tilapia provides nutrients for assorted vegetables, which in turn remove excess nitrogen, a waste byproduct. Last summer, South Andros students assisted with a garden project at �պ�����.

“Food systems are at the heart of place-based ecological design. Composting, pollination, and aquaponics are all directly inspired through ecological design. Developing creative ways to grow food on school campuses provides incredible opportunities for engaging students with the community,” Poleman says. “The fundamental collaboration in our evolving, place-based ecological design model is between university and community. Successful engagement grows from healthy partnerships, and authentic connection with local K-12 schools can be particularly synergistic.”


Motivated students will apply their learning at home

The synergy has other community roots, too.

�պ����� has teamed with Burlington restaurant and gallery ArtsRiot on the Champlain Elementary project. ArtsRiot will buy produce from the garden this summer and has provided technical expertise. ArtsRiot co-owner Felix Wai, then a �պ����� graduate student studying ecological design, established the connection with South Andros High when he and other students went there to help install a hydroponics system, in which plants grow in liquid nutrient solutions, not soil.  

At the Champlain Elementary garden, South Andros High senior Royneil Lewis combs his fingers through the dirt, a contrast to the rocky soil that hampers growing conditions in the Bahamas. “Anything dealing with not using soil to grow food is interesting to me,” he says.
 
“Now the students are more inspired and have a vision of what we will be getting into at home,” says South Andros High teacher Trenton Durant, who brought the group to Burlington.

Intercultural connections are important to the collaboratory

Durant and Poleman supervised the compost project, which uses rot-resistant wood from �պ�����’s Jericho Research Forest. Building with local materials is part of the collaboratory concept.   

So is giving students opportunities to gain leadership skills.

Motto, from Westford, oversees volunteers for the Champlain Elementary garden and will do the same at Flynn Elementary when that site is prepared. She is majoring in environmental science with an ecological design concentration and a minor in food systems.      

As vital as hands-on learning is to the collaboratory model, maintaining strong intercultural bonds is just as important. Poleman plans to further the exchange between South Andros High and Rock Point School.

For Motto, who worked on the aquaponics project in South Andros this year, building relationships is key.

“What has been most valuable for me are all the connections I have made with people I’ve met in this exchange,” she says. “The connections you make with people when taking part in any kind of travel study are really important and should never be overlooked.”