Hello, my name is Flora Max. For much of my life, I have been interested in sustainability and climate justice in some shape or form. But I think, as is the case for a lot of people, the climate crisis tends to feel like this large unaddressable problem, especially in the way we think and talk about it. I have been involved in the climate movement in some capacity for most of high school and something I’ve noticed is that we tend to use fear as the ultimate motivator when trying to get people interested in the issue of climate, threatening them with phrases like, “catastrophic” and “apocalyptic”. While these may be true, for the individual all they do is push them further away from the movement which begins to feel very “doomsday”. And this was true for me: Even though I am very passionate about climate justice and advocacy it was draining just to attend the meeting of the advocacy group I was a part of. For my senior project, I always knew I wanted to focus on something involving the climate, but I didn’t want to spend months contemplating the possibly disastrous future while waiting for legislation that isn’t going to happen. Instead, I wanted to focus on what I as an individual could do in two months. I am not going to solve the climate crisis in two months, but I can help make improvements to my community while also promoting sustainability. Additionally, going to school in New York while living in New Jersey has made me feel isolated from the place where I live, and eager to give back. Because of this, I chose to focus on sustainable-urban farming in my community and partner with an organization called the Northeast Earth Coalition. The Northeast Earth Coalition is a non-profit working in northern New Jersey to promote food security and sustainable agriculture through things like community gardens as well as political outreach. To further continue my involvement in my community I will be helping to teach ceramics classes at the local art museum in my town. It is special to have an art museum in a relatively small town but it is a really good resource. Working there gives me the opportunity to share something that has been so special to me throughout high school, with the rest of my community

My project’s goal is to gain knowledge and experience around the technicalities of urban farming, such as composting and water irrigation as well as gain further understanding of the value of community-based activism. I will be working in the community garden while also helping with social media outreach on the NEEC’s social media. These are two different aspects that will give me a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to run an organization like that. I am planning to spend four hours a day Monday-Friday working in the community garden because it is spring there is a lot to do in terms of setting things up. Planting beds need to be refurbished, irrigation systems set up, and fences rebuilt. Additionally, the Northeast Earth Coalition runs an earth day fair where different environmentally-centric groups in northern New Jersey have a chance to share their work with the public as well as local politicians. I will be helping with outreach to those organizations. There isn’t a clear way to measure success on a project like this, I am not going to solve food insecurity in New Jersey or change the way agriculture works in America, but for me, success would look like gaining new tools and new approaches.