Our Research & Social Action Mission

As the Environment & Sustainability group, we wanted to create a project to make the greatest impact possible on the D.C. community, especially in light of the circumstances due to COVID-19. Even with our metropolitan-focused lens, however, we wanted to most importantly create a social action project that could be implemented across all urban areas in the world – not exclusively the D.C. area. Our project, in particular, focused on addressing: the need for a sustainable means of food production; pollution in urban areas, food insecurity, and; environmental racism, much of which has persisted in marginalized communities of color.

Over the course of our months-long research, our group has compiled our plethora of findings into the benefit of community agriculture and urban gardening – much of which we were all very excited to uncover and implement into our project! Our findings have uncovered that multilateral, community gardening practices can: reduce climate change; promote food security for marginalized groups; encourage participation and cooperation in all communities, and; increase overall public health. Through these discoveries, our group has sought to raise urgency about acknowledging the importance of our environment, addressing the importance of fresh foods, and working towards improve the general health of our local communities and populations.

Project Implementation & Results

After heavily conducted research and multiple team discussions, our group has finalized our social action project into organizing a social media campaign, where we could reach a larger, diverse audience to spread our information through Instagram and Facebook Posts. Following our social media postings, we planned on hosting a Zoom Seminar event with practitioners from the Urban Gardening field – Ibti Vincent of FoodPrints, Alex Morales of the Bridgeport Green Village Initiative, and Professorial Lecturer Victoria Kiechel of American University were our panelists, who kindly took the time out of their day to share their knowledge with us.

Through our social action project, we hoped to: educate those interested in learning more about urban agriculture and community gardening practices; inspire individuals to bring a community involvement presence in their local areas; raise awareness about the importance of our environment, addressing the importance of fresh foods, and working towards improve the general health of our local communities and populations, and; most of all, make the project experience enjoyable for all attendees and panelists.

While we were unable to do a more “hands-on” project, like planting seeds in our own community garden in the D.C. area, we hoped to inspire dozens of individuals to get involved in their own gardening efforts in their local communities. Overall, our project sought to share tons of researched, valuable information about urban agriculture to individuals, in addition to a Zoom Seminar event to hopefully answer and explain a lot of the important questions that attendees may had in order to get involved in community gardening efforts. Following the comments from our event, it is safe to say that we did achieve our goals, that our project accomplished everything we hoped for and even exceeded our expectations.

Project Takeaways

Following our project’s conclusion, our group has acknowledged that the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed us from executing our original plans. In light of these circumstances, however, our group has felt confident and proud of the work we have accomplished in this virtual environment. Even so, such a well-researched and organized social action project would have not been made possible if it wasn’t for the resilience and hard work of each group member.