Located in South Bronx, the Morris Campus is made up of four public high schools. Students these four schools are reclaiming a 14,000 square feet of underutilized parking lot and transforming it into a community farm named Morris Campus Farm. Morris Campus Farm is the first urban production educational farm in Morrisania.
Morris Campus Farm is a collaborative effort by students of ‘Bronx International High School’, ‘Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies’, ‘High School For Excellence’ and ‘High School for Violin and Dance’. (Each school with a student population of 400 students, with a large percentage of the students classified as students with special needs and English Language Learners.
Building a Farm with the students will provide us an opportunity to address issues of food insecurity and the struggle for food justice, which plagues our student population. By reclaiming this space students can provide themselves and their community with a large amount of fresh produce. We will not only be teaching them how their food grows and where it comes from. But also the connections between good eating habits and being healthy.
The act of working with the earth and plants will physically and emotionally reconnect students to their natural state of being. Mindfulness practice will integrate emotional, social and academic skills as students create art, learn to farm and eventually access quality foods that they grow with their own hands.