Stephen Ritz and the Green Bronx Machine || Revolutionizing food and education

Healthy Food for healthy minds : how "organic grown students" can change the future of marginalized communities

Of the incredible people I had the chance to meet during my "Fork Power adventure", there is one person that I still think of as one of the most powerful encounters so far. This person is Stephen Ritz, a true food hero and change-maker, that I had the chance to meet and interview during the Future Food Lexicon Lab bootcamp for the G7 agriculture summit.

I was impressed and genuinely touched by the energy and passion that this tall, smiling man with a cheese foam cowboy hat, was capable of instilling in the audience of the G7 Agro-generation. How could one not be inspired by his incredible story?

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx educator who believes that students shouldn’t have to leave their community to live, learn, and earn in a better one.

His mission is to move generations of students into possibilities of personal and academic successes which they had never imagined, while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, one of America’s poorest boroughs. In a couple of years, Stephen’s extended student and community family have grown more than 60,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx, while generating extraordinary academic performance.

"We're growing a lot of food, but more than anything, we're growing healthy attitudes."

The Green Bronx Machine

Green Bronx Machine builds healthy, equitable, and resilient communities through inspired education, local food systems, and workforce development. It is a school-based model using urban agriculture aligned to key school performance indicators, to grow healthy students and healthy schools and to transform communities that are fragmented and marginalized into neighborhoods that are inclusive and thriving.

While his influence surpassed well beyond the Bronx’s blocks, Stephen is first and foremost a teacher (not a farmer!). It was a major challenge placed before him in that capacity that made him create the Green Bronx Machine. The project was born via collaboration between him and his students, who observed that as waistlines expanded, engagement and opportunities in school decreased, school performance suffered, and hope and ambition became minimized. 

He started by bringing his classroom outside, and bringing the outside into the classroom. He created a "Green Teens" task force, where kids used plants to cover up graffiti and gang tags around the neighborhood. He then incorporated some edible vegetables, became the first teacher to place a tower garden in his class, and the rest is history and TED talks !

From McDonald’s to Spinach

"We're a walk away from the largest McDonald's in the Bronx and the most profitable Dominos per square foot in America. For most of these students, food is something that comes through a bulletproof window”, he said, in front of an audience of food decision-makers and corporates in Bergamo. No wonder that access to fresh, self-grown food seemed quite unreal for kids who live surrounded by fast food. Stephen himself admits he was 100 percent disconnected from the food he ate. But through the kids nurturing plants, one thing led to another. “When I realized the cultural relevance of the food and the nutritional value of the food, I myself lost over 100 pounds by eating the things we grew. It became critical for me to integrate nutrition into school where it was needed most: where they are learning.” Stephen adds, showing to the audience a much larger t-shirt of the Green Bronx Machine he used to wear just few years ago.

Originally an after-school, alternative program for high school students, Green Bronx Machine has evolved into a model fully integrated into core curriculum. Students grow, eat and love their vegetables en route to improved academic performance. Stephen told me: ”We needed to bring the fun back to food.”

60,000 pounds of Bronx vegetables later, Stephen "favorite crops”, as he says, include healthy students, high performing schools, graduates, registered voters, living wage jobs and members of the middle class. 

Let’s create Green Machines everywhere!

The first thing I thought when I met Stephen in Italy and listened to his story, is how incredibly obvious it is that we should scale up this model and to copy-paste green machines everywhere in the world.

There are countless areas such as South Bronx, also in welfare-rooted Europe. The more I am digging into the food system, the more I realize that poorest and marginalized people, especially in urban areas, are those who have less access to good and healthy food, and those who suffer the most from food-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, chronic diseases. The paradox is that often times people who arrive from the countryside to cities in search of jobs and a better future abandon their healthy food in favor of processed, industrial and sugar-packed meals. 

It is fundamental that schools, who, especially in poor areas, are the ones who provide children with the main hot meal of the day, play a key role in their food-education and lead by example by teaching youngsters to take power on the food they eat. 

Stephen is on a mission to spread his curriculum to any school that will use it. He already set up a partnership with Chicago public schools, then he will open a sister classroom in Dubai through a partnership with ESOL education. He's also launching a growing program for parents in the Bronx, as well as an apprentice program so older kids can enter the workforce with a knowledge of urban farming technology. I am convinced that his open-source model

Growing food is a social ladder

Stephen says that the real trick is to make school relevant to the lives of students. He doesn’t consider himself a genius or an expert, but rather someone who cares enough about kids to find ways to engage them.

"When you put a seed in a little kid's hand, you're making them a promise that the seed is going to grow into something great that they can eat. And then they get to watch it happen." This instills in them a sense of pride and a new interest in what they're putting into their bodies. 

Perhaps most importantly, by growing their own food kids see the results of hard work and diligence. Elements of math, science and other school subjects are integrated into each growing lesson plan, and this project-based learning helps them apply classroom knowledge in practical settings. As a result, 100 percent of the students have passed their New York state exams.

“Nobody will go broke giving love”

Stephen Ritz is convinced that if children have access to one kind, caring adult in their life, they'll be successful. He understood that if he can be hat kind, caring adult for as many people as possible, these children will become capable of respecting themselves, their bodies and their community.  His statement is very simple yet powerful: ”What we do is make resources available and love them. Nobody will go broke giving love."

Find out more about the Green Bronx Machine:

Donate here! https://greenbronxmachine.org/donate/

https://greenbronxmachine.org/ 

Green Bronx Machine on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/green.BX.machine 

Stephen Ritz: https://stephenritz.com/ 

Stephen's Ritz amazing book

Hello, World!