The SCH Community Plate Club is taking an additional step to advocate for food security and STEM education by building a hydroponic garden in the middle school. The club’s mission is to donate the weekly excess cafeteria food to Whosoever Gospel Church, a homeless shelter off Germantown Avenue, and the hydroponic garden is meant to act as an additional source of food donations.
Five key club members are involved in this project. Damian Mezler-Surkan and Judah Meyer, the heads of the Community Plate Club, oversee the project and integrate it into the club’s mission. Leo Cohen and Logan Kirkpatrick are engineers and designers of the garden. Logan Landau is working on securing grants necessary to fund the project and Ms. Knutson along with various other teachers is helping with mechanics and advising the club members.
The idea for the project originated from the club members’ desire for an alternative source of food from which to donate. So far, the club has donated more than 2 tons of food to the Whosoever Gospel Church, however, “there’s only so much food that our cafeteria can produce,” says Junior Leo Cohen. “We need to have other sources of food and this is one of the ways that we are considering doing that.”
A hydroponic garden was chosen as the best method for growing additional food because it has “high and fast output and relatively low maintenance,” Cohen says. Essentially, hydroponic gardening is a method of growing plants without soil and instead using a nutrient solution. The plants are placed in a pipe system and get suspended in the nutrient solution, absorbing essential minerals and water directly from their roots. This method decreases the amount of space needed compared to a regular garden, decreases the risk of pests, and produces a quick and easy way to get food year-round as the garden is indoors.
The project needs funding to build the hydroponic garden. Logan Landau is working on the grant-writing process by carefully outlining budgets, goals, and community impact to secure both the school and outside resources. The club’s funding strategies include an application to a STEM fund at SCH and reaching out to local organizations for sponsorships. According to Landau, they expect to secure between $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the scope of the garden. “The goal isn’t to ask for as much as we want,” he explained. “It’s to show how little we need to build a sustainable solution”. Once the grant is acquired, the club can focus on buying materials like PVC pipes for the structure, LED lights to simulate sunlight, and pumps that circulate nutrient solutions.
As the garden will be built in the middle school, Judah and Damian hope to start a Community Plate Club there as well and get middle school students involved by harvesting the plants. Ms. Knutson supports this initiative and actively seeks to integrate the hydroponic garden into the middle school science curriculum. By doing so, the club can build a lasting effect on the community and create a pipeline for similar organizations in the future. Judah and Damian also expressed their interest in opening chapters of other community plates in schools to further community impact.
With the combined effort of the student engineers, the Community Plate Club, and the school faculty, the hydroponic garden is expected to be installed in January 2025. Once functional, the garden will not only serve as a sustainable food source for the school cafeteria and local shelters but will also be a living science classroom for middle school students.
