PowerPoint Presentation

Team Green Eggs and HamProject: Aggietarium

Motto:Hunger amelioration and food security begins with direct involvement in the food chain, this means active investment in growing our own food and educating ourselves on how to do so, buying directly from farmers, and cooking our own healthy base meals.

Who we are?! 4 Texas A&M AggiesTaylor

Hannah

20 years oldAgricultural DevelopmentPassions: Youth Development, Art, and Music

24 years oldPublic Admin & Animal NutritionPassions: Animal/ Human Health

4 Texas A&M Aggies continuedJohn

Ana

20 years oldInternational Studies and Pre-MedPassions: International Affairs, Health, and Politics 24 years old Political Science & Advanced Intl AffairsPassions: Food Security, Ecology, Peace

Our PurposeWe aim to influence positive and lasting sustainable change in the world through exciting, hands-on education, especially that of kids and youth. Our kids and youth will dictate the future of us as human species and the future of the world as we know it. We want to promote proven sustainable ways to manage natural resources while also enhancing the food processes, which will in turn, improve the human health and nutrition, and significantly contribute in securing food and ameliorating hunger! Our holistic approach on going about this revolves around our Aggietarium:Phase 1: Aggietarium (indoor and outdoor) Phase 2: Worldwide Aggietarium Online Network Use 1 (tv show, database and encyclopedia) Phase 3: Worldwide Aggietarium Online Network Use 2 (real time farmville social network)

Phase 1:Aggietarium (Indoor)Idea: Create a childrens museum of sustainable agriculture where everything needed to know about nutrition, health, food, and use of waste to ameliorate hunger while saving our planet will be learned; infinite and valuable information concerning each community will be shared with kids and caretakers.

How?

Interactive Daily and Weekend Educational Activities and Stationary ExhibitsTeaching and Learning activitiesReal community go-to places to make a difference!

Interactive Weekend Educational Activities

Weekend (main) Activities- Trips to: farmers market to sell Aggietarium produce food fairs to sell Aggietariums grown food visit farms and interact with local farmers

Interactive Daily Educational Activities

Daily Interactive Activities-Human Health Gamessanitation- washing food and hands after a day in the farmCooking- the wonders of cooking from a biodigester + deliciously base meals from base foods grown in the farm

Environment Health Games Online- Plant 100 Million Trees (planting trees in 3 forests and following of their growth, life, and impact on environment and climate change), etc.

Hunger GamesOnline- Free Rice (get 1 word definition right=10 grains of rice donated to World Food Programme), Food Force (social media game in which each crop and farm equipment bought goes to real school meals in places where the World Food Programme take place), etc.

Educational Stationary ExhibitsFor the future of change-making empathy is key. We will motivate empathy by offering resources where children will learn to CARE.

Aggietarium will have interactive touch screen stationary exhibits (as well as ipads and cell phones to set kids up for existing games and apps such as UNEPs Carbon Calculator- about terrestrial and marine ecosystems and FAOs Forestry- facts, videos and quizzes about forests) and books such as Score the Goals: Teaming Up to Achieve the Millenium Development Goals-childrens comic book about poverty and development issues.

Kids respond well to interactive games This is no ordinary exhibit!

Teaching and Learning activities

Nutrition is key to a human beings fulfilled life-long development, both cognitive and physical. Most activities inside Aggietarium will concentrate around the essentials of a healthy and proper nutrition, these include modeling the Learn, Grow, Eat, Go! Program and Choose My Plate

Real community go-to places to make a difference!

In every community there are groups of organized people who have set well thought out programs, websites and apps that make a difference somewhere in the food chain. Aggietarium staff will become familiarized in each of these and will teach children and adults how to become involved. These are some examples in the U.S. :Where does our food come from? Realtimefarms.comWhat is in our industrialized food products? Openfoodfacts.orgAm I buying/eating endangered species of fish AppPrograms You can get involved so food is not wasted and goes to our food insecure neighbors:Food Cowboy @ distribution LevelZero Percent @ retail levelFoodStar and The Urban Food Iniative @ consumer levelHidden Harvest @ famer levelNational Farm to School Program @ school level

Phase 1: Aggietariums BackyardThrough our Aggietariums outside component we aim to practice what we preach= sustainability. We will base all of our practices on affordable practices so they can be easily replicated from the richest to the poorest community in the world, as well as sound and intelligent techniques. These revolve around:

WATER, PLANTS & SOIL CONSERVATION:AGROECOLOGYHYDROPONICSSYSTEM OF ROOT INTENSIFICATION (SRI)

(ALWAYS ADHERING TO EACH COMMUNITYS MICROCLIMATES AND SPECIFIC agriCULTURES!!)

RATIONAL MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL ANIMALS

(Ewww THE USE OF A BIODIGESTER!!)

WATER, PLANTS & SOIL CONSERVATIONBy using scientifically proven, sustainable practices (Agroecology, SRI, and Hydroponics), our Aggietarium garden will model Junior Master Gardener Programs approach and their existing gardening educational games and education curricula. Examples of existing JMG games :1. Nature Web Game: Have a ball of string and each child hold a part of that string. Slowly remove parts of the web by describing environmental or nutrimental issues. Describe how everyone has a certain part in life.2. Gas Gobblers: Place students in a square. Have four volunteers and give them each a bubble container. These volunteers are the trees. Describe the environment at this condition. Provide three minutes for the students to pop as many bubbles as they can for oxygen. Continue to do this until all trees are gone. Describe how the importance of the environment and plants are to human life.

WATER, PLANTS & SOIL CONSERVATIONThis is what our Agroecological farm and fish tank and pond (where we will combine green technology, aquaculture and hydroponics to provide protein, vegetables and clean water in a self powered environment) will look like:

RATIONAL MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL ANIMALS

We will begin by raising: Rabbits, Chickens, GoatsMore later (potentially)We care very much for the animals who provide us with our food, we aim to give them the life they deserve and while caring for them we care for ourselves and our foods!

Rabbits

Friendly and furry animals for a young child, and relatively cheap! They are very easy to handle while representing minor investment compared to a project involving larger livestock. In terms of nutrition, rabbit meats are nutritious that are high in protein and low in fat, sodium and cholesterol compared to other common meats. Raising rabbits activity will be an educational experience for youth and it will provide rich manure for gardening.

Fun Facts:Manure from rabbits makes excellent compost, rich in organic matter and nutrients that can produce remarkable garden and flowering results.

Special thanks to: http://users.tamuk.edu/kfsdl00/rabb.html

ChickensThey are birds used for production of eggs and (or) meat for human food. Chickens eat worms, insects, seeds, grains, snails, slugs, fruits, vegetables and many other foods. Raising chickens will provide protein source and will generate income for people. Chickens manure is known as one of the best animal manure for fertilizer!Fun facts:Hen does not need a rooster to lay eggs

Special thanks to: http://www.almanac.com/home-pets-family/raising-chickens-blog

GoatsMany of you guys would know programs like a Farm-Africa provide goats in Africas rural areas for many poor families to survive. Why goats? Generally goat farming means rearing goat for the purpose of harvesting milk, meat and fiber. Goat farming makes profits and provide nutrition for families. For gardening purposes, goat manure is a real asset. Goat feces are easily handled, stored or directly applied on vegetables, trees, and flower gardens, as fertilizer. It also increase the water holding capacity of the soil. Goat feces do not normally attract flies or breed maggots.Fun facts:High producing, well fed dairy goats produce more and better feces than other goats

Special thanks to: http://www.dirtdoctor.com/Goat-Manure_vq356.htm

Animal WasteUsing manure to fertilize gardenBiodigester

Special Activities

Summer Courses

New business model- This will be a from farm to farmers marketcommunity simulation. Children will use the crops grown at the Aggietarium and act as important players (farmers, cooperative bankers, chefs, etc.) of the Aggietariums from-farm-to-plate food chain in order to learn how food integrates into their everyday lives. (They will use a fraction of goods grown throughout the year that doesnt go to the local farmers market).

Special Activities

Special Seminar These will be hosted throughout the year, at various times and days to fit the communitys busy and varying schedules. They will feature speakers that will expand on topics related to the weekly or monthly theme of the Aggietarium.

Certification SessionsEach month a Junior Master Gardner trainer will train parents and children free of charge on how to become a trainer of the Junior Master Gardner Program (train the trainer) and gain certification- hope for a multiplying effect in and out of the Aggietarium around the community!

Phase 2: Worldwide Aggietarium Online Network (use one)

Youtube channel of Aggietarium activities by children for children:Children will broadcast a mock tv show about their time at the Aggietarium. The shows will feature new recipes, animal projects, and agricultural experiments going on in the museum. This mock tv channel will be uploaded in the online network. This will serve as a visual and virtual explanation of what potentially all Aggitariums are doing around the world- the more people that are empowered through connection technologies the more abilities we have to collapse geographic distances so that an inequity--in this case the inequity of HUNGER-- happening across the globe is not perceived as so remote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eIYZjzO7A

Community by Community Encyclopedia:Each Aggietariums backyard will inherently be a scientific discovery and experiment, as we will discover all specifics pertaining to each given garden; its native plants, crops and microclimates weather, unique soil composition and the role of water in this specific community (lets remember in many places of the world water is a scarce resource). These will be recorded by each of our children scientists as a following activity in the garden- "there is a kind of blindness to the fact that we really dont understand these communities were trying to help, its because were trying to fix things with resources, rather than trying to fix things through understanding. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eIYZjzO7A

Phase 3: Worldwide Aggietarium Online Network (use two)The web based network is two-fold, it will also serve as a way of monitoring and evaluating what projects within the Aggietarium have worked effectively in different communities. It will:* upkeep statistics about each community, tracing all community improvements (improvement in food security per community, involvement with food processes, amount of food wasted, and more);* keep track of how many people are creating their own backyard farms and putting in practice what they learn in Aggietarium.

We are quickly becoming a global neuronetwork- The power of a cracked idea in this interconnected age spreads so quickly that scale can happen in a never before pace

Once you get to a point where anybody in any community is empowered to learn, design, and participate, it will allow anybody to feel a sense of both ownership and responsibility to each other and the rest of the world

Special thanks to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eIYZjzO7A

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