Choosing to Participate:
A Social Justice Service Project on Sustainability

Today I was one of the hosts of the workshop sweet sustainable jewelry.  We prepared with buying a bunch of bags, I think about 6, of starburst for our workshop.  When we began the workshop, the members of the group seemed very excited to have starburst at their fingertips.  I was very excited to begin the workshop.  We all began by explaining what you can do to be sustainable when eating your treats.  For example, we said that if you eat candy or gum often, you can save the wrapper [if it’s rectangular] and then make something beautiful.  We demonstrated with starburst wrappers and we folded them so they could be intertwined to make a lovely bracelet.  Everyone was a bit confused as to how to fold the paper, but we went around and helped everyone that felt that they were struggling.  I really enjoyed helping people with their questions about sustainability and how to reduce, reuse and recycle.  I enjoyed this because is really felt confident about my answer.  Everyone seemed to enjoy making bracelets and we played some music and definitely had a lot of fun!  I learned a lot from the speakers that I didn’t already know about how to save our earth.  I learned that I can decorate my apartment with very sustainable art from my art committee.  I am very content with the way we conducted our workshop because everyone seemed to have a lot of fun and also learned a lot but was obviously never bored by what we were saying.  It was exciting to listen to the things that our group members had to contribute and their creativity with the starburst.  I think that everyone in the group really actually learned a lot from this workshop.  -Ama Torres

On Saturday night, March 29th, I had an earth dinner at home. An earth dinner is what Mary Cleaver recommended each of us do.  It was an all natural, organic meal and we also conserved energy while eating by only using the light for that room.  We knew where each ingredient that made up our meal came from, and who grew the food and how it was grown. It was a very enlightening meal. It lasted for about an hour.

-Ama Torres

On March 28th, I managed to get a copy of the movie Our Daily Bread and I watched it. It was a very compelling movie about the conflicts among harvesting, producing and packing food.   I thought it was relatively like Fast Food Nation, but incredibly different because in ways it made more of an impact on you.  This was real life, no actors.  Also it was behind the scenes at a meatpacking plant and the truth can scare you more than a movie because you can’t convince someone that a movie is true.  Also, the movie really affected me because there was no dialogue.  I think that that really made you think about how important and how incredibly horrible what was going on actually is.  You had a lot  of time to think about how you were acting and contributing to this horrible situation too.  The lack of dialogue actually made you insert your own dialogue.  This movie really impacted my views about sustainability and the worldwide lack of informed people.  It was also very disappointing.  I spent about two hours watching that.

-Ama Torres

After we bought the produce for the next day’s event, we went to the Chelsea market and put on our aprons and got to work. We were escorted to the kitchen once we got to chelsea market and then we met the head chef in the kitchen.  He told us that we had to wash the potatoes for the next day’s event.  We were directed to fill the sinks with water so that we could wash efficiently by doing more than one potato at a time.  That was very sustainable.  We were listening to music and really had an exciting time working in the kitchen.  We washed the small potatoes first, then after we finished all three stations for the small potatoes, we moved on to the larger potatoes.  We finished the three stations and then we moved onto even larger potatoes that were darker.  Everyone in the kitchen was happy to be there and be sustainable and we were sharing their joy.  We washed potatoes for 1 to 2 hours and we also spent time with the chefs and assistants that worked for Cleaver Co..

-Ama Torres

On Wednesday, March 26th, Ava, Sophia and I went to the green market in union square and got a tour from Mary Cleaver, the head of Cleaver Co.. We then bought about 22 pounds of apples for the event the next day which was a screening called our daily bread. She explained the situation with farmers and how organic food is very difficult to keep going.  We really recognized the amount of work is put into one meal that’s organic!  It’s beautiful how dedicated some of these brave farmers are!  We also visited a compost booth where we learned about how to compost and what to make compost out of.  We got a big tour of the compost station and saw all of the people bringing their trash just to make the world a better place.  It was very inspiring!  I also saw all of the things that were in the compost.  I observed entire dinners and multiple different kinds of exotic foods.  We stayed at the green market for about 45 minutes, walking around and seeing the sustainability going on all around us.  I felt like a better person. 

-Ama Torres

I spent about an hour working on the FreshDirect website and the other large websites that send produce home. I did a project that involved finding the inventory of certain bananas and their types. I did the project based on an outline in an email from the leader of the Rainforest Alliance. The project was easy and enjoyable. I have been in and stayed in contact with the leader of the group, Rainforest Alliance, as well as a person that can help us and give us more work. Her name is Maria, and she works for the leader of the group, Tensie. She has information from the head of the alliance and she is helping us organize a letter campaign to help save the rainforest. Here is an email that Robbie and I sent to Maria to clarify the things that we could do to help.

Hi Maria,
We’re unsure of what sorts of work you’d like us to do. We’d love to develop a plan for fundraising or other activities, but we’re a little confused as to what those activities are. Tensie gave us a lot of information but we’re hoping you could bridge the gap between that information and what we can do.

-Ama