Sweetwater Organic Community Farm Camp
Sweetwater Organic Community Farm is a nonprofit educational foundation and community farm dedicated to sustainability and community involvement. As Florida's first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, we devote our resources to bringing fresh, healthy produce to the community, as well as educating the youth about organic practices and community involvement.
We value these principles deeply, and to assist in our vision we have designed a new camp program with Next Generation Sunshine State Standards in Earth Sciences as well as Project WILD, a curriculum devoted to wildlife and outdoor education.
At farm camp, campers will learn how to:
- Compost and maintain soil health.
- Cook and preserve food.
- Grow an organic garden from seed
- Identify numerous plant species.
- Identify nutrients/chemicals in food.
- Identify avian and aquatic species.
- Make a biodegradable seed pot for sprouts.
- Use microscopes to study plant life at the cellular level.
- Upcycle and create art with found objects.
As a nonprofit organization, we depend on the philanthropy of eco-conscious contributors. In order for our camp to really get off the ground, we need your help! By donating today, you will play a part in helping us to cultivate a new generation of sustainability-minded youngsters who engage with organic approaches to land use and who will understand where healthy, nutritious foods come from and why they matter.
What We Need & What You Get
We're currently seeking funding to purchase some key items for our program. We're seeking $5,000 to help purchase two iPads for our interactive microscope studies, a pressure canner for a food preservation lesson, and a number of other learning tools including notebooks, art supplies, bug loupes (containers with magnified lids that help us to observe consumers in compost), and child-size cultivators (among others). With these supplies, we'll be able to expand campers' knowledge base of the world around them, and it will provide them with different avenues for improving their lives and their community. If we don't reach our goals, we will prioritize purchasing educational supplies necessary for the foundation of our program such as the bug loupes, and cultivators. These items can also be utilized for our field trip program and are particularly valuable to the educating process.
The Impact
This project is an incredibly important endeavor for our farm. Not only will you help Sweetwater begin a new program, this program will be a launching pad for all future camp and field trip programming. Doing a summer camp will allow us to engage youths in our community for longer stretches of time and in so doing, we will be able to discover new methods and techniques for getting people in our community excited and educated about organic sustainability and healthy foods! As each generation turns to the next, people become further and further removed from our food system and its impacts on the planet. Children today don't seem to understand how food makes it to the grocery store, or how it was grown. You can make a real impact by helping to support our grassroots organization from the ground up in a way that delights children in our community and teaches them about these ever-growing issues.
Other Ways You Can Help
As previously mentioned, Sweetwater Organic Community Farm is a grassroots organization, so if you would like to help us out, but you're unable to make a contribution, remember to tell your friends! We depend on word-of-mouth support in order to thrive. Take just a few minutes to tell someone about our program, or if you don't have that much time, simply click your share button on Indiegogo to help us spread the word! Thank you for taking the time to support us. Your help absolutely matters, and we greatly appreciate it! Remember that by assisting us in this way, you're impacting an entire community, and from communities like ours to communities like yours, people deserve a chance to live healthy, productive, and satisfying lives.
