Tomatoes growing from Trevor Day School's rooftop garden

Surrounded by herbs, lettuce, arugula, and tomatoes, Amber Davila (18) picks fresh, plump leaves from a basil plant.  The leaves are thick and coated with droplets of water from the hose that she used to feed them.  A warm breeze rattles the leaves of the tomato plant next to her—vines stretching in every direction ornamented with green, orange, red, and golden tomatoes.

Although one might think at first that Amber is on a farm in the country tending to her small patch of land, a reassuring car horn and ambulance siren off in the distance puts Amber on the rooftop of the Trevor Day School in New York City.

Beneath the shadows of the skyscrapers that loom above and the helicopters that buzz overhead, Amber tends to the three 10×4 crates filled with rich soil and vegetation.  The small weekly gatherings that Amber collects from the garden are then brought down to the high school’s cafeteria where students can top their salads with juicy tomatoes or spice up their pesto pasta with fresh basil.  Rooftop gardens, however, are no stranger to the New York skyline; over the past decade, basil and bok choy have grown in Brooklyn, tomatoes, leeks, and cucumbers have grown in Queens, and commercial agriculture is making its way to the South Bronx where the city has proposed what would be the largest rooftop farm in the United States.

Herbs in full bloom on Trevor's rooftop garden

Not only have rooftop gardens have helped spur economical growth in communities around the city, but they have also aided in the slowing of the effects of climate change.  Food travels long distances to get to our kitchens everyday, and millions of tons of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere to transport, package, and distribute commercial agriculture.  Rooftop gardens help to eliminate the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted into our atmosphere by selling the produce at local markets and using fewer trucks to transport it there.  In a sense, rooftop gardens like the one at the Trevor Day School are helping to combat climate change.

Climate change is no myth.  It is real.  This past fall, Hurricane Sandy proved to the East Coast just how devastating the effects of climate change can be.  Despite the magnitude of Sandy’s wake-up call to the United States, the impact of climate change has already been disrupting the lives of millions of people across the globe, particularly in countries that have the fewest resources to cope.  For the world’s poorest, the devastating effects of climate change have become yet another adversity to face and another impediment to the progress of achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Climate change is a significant long-term change in weather patterns of a specific region; one cannot overcome climate change, rather, one must adapt and alter their lives to cope with new weather patterns.  Already struggling to survive, those who live in poverty must now adapt to a new way of life without the necessary tools to do so.

Although the least developed countries in the world are impacted the most by climate change, developed countries contribute the greatest to the climate change crisis.  Across the United States the average per capita CO2 emissions was 18.9 tons in 2011, versus 0.2 tons across the 49 poorest countries in the world.  The global agriculture and food industry have contributed a great deal to the effects of climate change.  Deforestation, transportation of food over long distances, use of fertilizers and few crop varieties, as well as livestock management have taken a toll on the environment.  Since the late 20th century, millions of acres of rainforest in South and Central America have been cleared and converted into cattle pasturelands due to the growing demand for meat in the U.S.  Food is also transported all around the globe every day, with the average meal traveling 1,490 miles from farm to plate–think about that the next time you sit down to dinner.  The CO2 emissions attributable to producing, packaging, and distributing the food consumed by a family of four are estimated to be about eight tons each year!

A pastoralist grazing with his cattle (Photo: Niger, Concern Worldwide)

So how does that burger you ate for dinner last night affect a family in Niger living on less than $2 a day?  The amount of greenhouse gasses emitted while packing, transporting, and distributing that burger has an effect on the global environment and its inhabitants; for those who rely on steady weather patterns to survive, climate change can disturb environmental stability and ultimate survival.  Niger is largely comprised of farmers and herders who depend on rain to sustain the crops and livestock that are their sole sources of income and food.  If rains fail, so do crops.  Livestock die.  And small farmers literally watch their sole livelihood fade away, grinding their families even deeper into poverty.

In the past 10 years, however, Niger has suffered from the increased effects of climate change including desertification, deforestation, drought, and plagues of locusts.  The increase of CO2 emissions has led to an increase in global temperatures, which has resulted in unpredictable seasons and crop failures for those who rely on steady weather patterns.

Impoverished farmers, like the majority of those who live in Niger, do not have the resources to adapt quickly enough to the changing weather patterns experienced in recent years.  Farming communities in Niger are also particularly vulnerable to changes in rainfall, because the majority of their agriculture is rain-fed with no access to irrigation.  After the most recent drought in 2010 in Niger, the United Nations warned that food supplies were dangerously scarce and that 60 percent of the country’s population was facing hunger.  Niger is just one example of the dozens of impoverished nations that suffer from the effects of an environmental disaster exacerbated by the world’s most developed countries.

Because climate change has been fueled by the wasteful lifestyles that many of us living in the developed world often lead, making small changes that benefit the environment and decrease the effects of climate change is easy to do.  Taking personal action to reduce your own CO2 emissions as much as you can by taking public transportation, recycling, buying locally-grown food, and planting trees is the simplest way to make a difference both for the climate and those who are affected by its change.  To explore other ways you can take action to help bring awareness to the effects of climate change in the developing world, participate in the Global Concerns Classroom and UClass Earth Day Project.

Amber preparing Trevor's garden for the season

Students like Amber are even going one step further; by maintaining the rooftop garden, Amber is not only doing something good for the environment but is also indirectly helping those in need.  “The goal for the garden was to make people aware of the change in our climate and the different ways that the community could get involved in global issues,” Amber says, “[The garden] has led to an opportunity to benefit the environment and a learning opportunity for students and teachers.”

Amber hopes that younger students at the Trevor Day School are inspired by the work that she and her fellow classmates are doing and eventually adopt the garden when Amber graduates this spring.  Now preparing the rooftop garden for another bountiful spring season, Amber recalls starting the garden over a year ago, noting that “composting sights and gardening organizations were willing to help out, so it was easy to get involved.”

Thanks to the efforts of students like Amber and future generations to come, the air will hopefully be cleaner and farmers in countries like Niger will be harvesting crops from one bountiful season after another.

Global Concerns Classroom worked with Middle School students at Lawrence Woodmere Academy (LWA) on April 18, 2013 to explore solutions to the Millennium Development Goals in an all-day global summit workshop. Students worked in teams to target one of the MDGs in a developing country. Team Somalia chose to present part of their plans in a music video. We couldn’t be more impressed – check it out!

You wanna solve world problems?

It’s pretty tough

But we’ll help the people in Somalia

We have to get them some primary education

And we’ll plan it out

No fabrication!

Take them from unsafe places

To Hargesia

Put schools there

And then voila!

You got educated kids

The only problem is the fare

And about that…

How do we get them there?

And what about pirates

And also the war?

Let’s focus on teachers

We need more!

No, let’s go back to getting them there.

How do we elude

The pirates and soldiers

That are all real crude?

How about Kenya?

It’s pretty safe there!

We’ll show the Somalians

That we care!!

We still got a few things to figrue out

But when we’re done

We’ll scream and shout

We’ll show the people that we care

Put schools in Hargesia and put the people there

We’re solving world problems one step at a time

We’ll tell you all about it as we bust this rhyme!!

Once again, how do we get them ’round the sea?

We could get a van, not a bad ide’!

How much is the van?

2,100 dollars

Well, that’s a lot, but we’ll take it.

Holla!

About the money?

So kids can go to school?

We’ll get experienced people 

To make jobs that are cool.

What about teachers?

We’ll pay them each 500 dollars per each year!

So we got vans?

We got ‘em!

Teachers?

We got ‘em!

Jobs?

We got ‘em!

YEAH!

We’ll make classes longer

Make the people stronger

Teacher training

There ain’t no hating!

We’ll show the people that we care

Put schools in Hargesia and put the people there

We’re solving world problems one step at a time

We’ll tell you all about it as we bust this rhyme!!

The winning team proposed a "Mothers Helping Mothers" program to help improve maternal health in Bangladesh

The Middle School has once again partnered with Concern Worldwide to become active participants in making the world a better place. With preparation, our students have been able to discuss and debate the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals for 2015, developing a hopeful perspective of the world and the role they could play in directly influencing outcomes.

This work also accomplishes a host of educational objectives: teaching international geography, developing leadership and public speaking skills, and encouraging higher level thinking. We believe it is critical for our students to expand their perspective beyond their home backyards and Woodmere Boulevard. Knowing about the challenges faced in other parts of the world makes students aware of and appreciative of what they have, but it also gives them a sense of hope for the future. They see that a helping hand has improved the lives of others and they may, themselves, be part of a solution one day. This will truly prepare them to be influential citizens of the world.

This year’s work began with all Middle School advisory groups taking part in lessons throughout the year around the Millennium Development Goals. The students in Grades 5 – 8 also heard a series of presentations throughout the year from Concern Worldwide staff members around the themes explored in the advisory lessons.

The students in Grades 5- 8 participated in the Millennium Development Goals Summit on April 18. This required them to break into 7 teams to explore solutions for the challenges in a variety of countries, including Rwanda, Haiti and Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Somalia, Ethiopia and Pakistan.  Each team was given an imaginary budget of three million dollars and information on a variety of programs to improve conditions in their region. The team had to decide how to spend the money on projects including agriculture, shelter, water and sanitation, education, health, and infrastructure reconstruction. They then had to develop a presentation to pitch their proposal to the Concern Worldwide staff and faculty members who were official observers, guides and judges for the day’s events.

Each group was led by 8th grade students who facilitated the work of the group and guided them through the tasks of the day. The groups deployed a robust variety of presentation modalities, including PowerPoint, Google Docs to allow several students to work on a common presentation simultaneously, Prezi, several movie-making programs, posters and a skit. The students gathered at the end of the day and were critiqued by the judges and one group was chosen as the winner of the competition for the $3M.

The students worked with such dedication and determination throughout the day, some students even giving up their recess time to complete their presentations. This opportunity for student leadership and collaboration among the multi-grade groups created an active and dynamic day for all!

Listen to team Somalia’s Education rap and music video here!

Every year, high schools across New York City spring into action and gather as many members as they can to join the run and fundraise for a great cause. Last year, my school’s team raised over $1,000 for the run and hopes to beat that amount this year. However, the Spring Run is not about who can raise the most money or gather the most members; it is about a community of individuals coming together in support of a great cause. Year after year, the number of New Yorkers that come out to run at the Spring Run is an assuring sign that people do care about global issues and go the extra mile, literally, to make a difference.

But what can a four-mile run do to eradicate poverty? The donation from simply registering can provide farming tools, seeds, a garden fence, and business training for market vendors to sell crops for income. By getting friends, colleagues, and family to sponsor your run, you can raise enough to provide baby delivery kits and training for birth attendants in areas where access to the nearest hospital is 50 miles away, or provide desks, chairs, pencils, chalk, and a blackboard for students who don’t have the proper materials in order to receive an education. Those four miles that you run can mean four less miles that a child has to walk each way everyday to get clean water for their family.

Though you may not be able to see the benefits from a four-mile run on a beautiful Saturday in the park, the children who will be able to be treated by trained health professionals, attend school with their own books, and eat because their parents were able to buy food with the money they made at market will.

You can make a difference! Enter your high school for the Concern School Challenge and your team could win:

• A trophy for raising the most funds in the high school category
• A pizza party at your school featuring a Concern staff speaker
• And an opportunity to apply for Concern’s 2012 Student Field Visit for team leaders who from schools who fundraise $500

To learn more and to register or donate towards a team, visit the Spring Run page.

The MDGs envisioned that by 2015, it is possible to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Ensure universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Halt the spread of HIV and AIDS, malaria, and major diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

A lot of progress has been made on the MDGs, but there is still work to be done to ensure that the MDGs are fully met by the target date and beyond. Momentum 1000 is a global initiative that seeks to bring a community of individuals, organizations, and institutions together to celebrate successes, reinvigorate discussion, and begin a post-2015 development framework through a 1,000-minute digital rally.

As youth who will carry the MDGs in your generation, your voice matters! Take part in one of the many digital conversations occurring today and let the global community know what MDGs are the most important to you and what needs to be done to ensure that the next generation lives without poverty.

You can:

1. Join a Twitter, Facebook, or Google Hangout event today: http://momentum1000.org/calendar/
2. Share about the MDGs by downloading these MDG infographics and posting it on social media: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
3. Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts on the MDGs and its achievement by 2015.

Students exploring solutions to women's rights at GCC's 2013 Annual Student Workshop

On March 1st, 75 students from eight New York area high schools gathered at the Mutual of America banquet hall to think critically about the difficult challenges facing women and girls including poverty, health, and education, and to discuss possible solutions. The theme this year’s summit was “Women and Girls: The Key to the Future”.

In this dynamic workshop, students were able to analyze and understand the impact of inequities for women and girls, as well as develop action plans using a budget of $3 million to respond to the countries’ needs. Working in collaborative groups, students considered the diverse perspectives of key-stakeholders included in their plans. Finally, with only 5 minutes to present, students created and shared engaging presentations to share with the rest of the group.

This year’s workshop was a great success! Highlights included the addition of live tweeting, where students were able to tweet questions to our guest speakers, provide each other with support and feedback, and interact with Concern staff members. Team DRC even got to tweet with one of our staff members currently working overseas and received great advice for their proposal!

Introducing live tweeting also enabled students to explore the role social media can play in enacting social change. Among the multitude of supportive tweets throughout the day were some closing remarks from Newcomers High School student, Sarah Hilaire: @smhilaire96, “Had a great day, knowing new students and working with them, tweeting abt the presentation. Thank you Concern Worldwide #fun #GCCwrkshp”.

Students were not the only ones caught up in the spirit of creating solutions for global issues of poverty. A teacher from James Baldwin High School reported using this information learned from the workshop as a bridge into a unit on global women and girls issues and rights – “great lead in!” she said. Similarly, a teacher from Lawrence Woodmere Academy mentioned, “As a school, we are making efforts to create a more global curriculum, so programs such as this streamlines excellently into that goal.”

Here at Global Concerns Classrooms we have high hopes that students and teachers alike will be able to take the knowledge and skills learned from this workshop back to their schools and apply it to their everyday lives, sharing information with family and friends.

Thank you to all of our participating students for their effort, creativity, and commitment to the issue. A huge thank you, as well, to all of the teachers who offered tremendous support throughout the day and continue to promote international education in their classrooms. We hope to see all of you again next year!

View more photos of the 2013 GCC Student Workshop on our Facebook album.

Photo: Concern Worldwide, Tanzania

Today is World Water Day and Concern has been working on an exciting research project to bring clean water to villages in Tanzania using seeds from a moringa tree to purify unsafe drinking water.

Destina Leopard, 32, lives with her husband and five children in a mud hut scantily held together by sticks and banana palms on a hillside.

To fetch water, Destina walks to an unprotected spring through grass and maize crops at the bottom of the hill. The water is a milky grey and stagnant, more like a large, polluted city puddle than a stream, but out of necessity, it is what they drink, cook, and bathe with.

Concern Worldwide, as part of a larger research project, distributed seeds that grow on pods of a local tree called Moringa and taught Destina and her family to use them as a natural water purifier. When dried, grounded into a fine white powder, and added to water, Moringa seeds, which have a unique chemical property, attract common contaminants that make people sick, like E. coli, and then settle to the bottom. People then filter the water, leaving the moringa powder along with potentially dangerous bacteria and other pollutants at the bottom.

Destina says she now uses the seeds every day to clean her water. “Since we received the seeds, no one has been sick with diarrhea,” she says. “We are happy from our hearts.”

Watch this video to learn more and share with others in honor of World Water Day!

Photo: Sierra Leone, Concern Worldwide

Today, March 8^th, marks International Women’s Day. This year, the theme is “A Promise is a Promise: Time for Action to End Violence Against Women”. At our NY office, Concern is celebrating by participating in a brown bag breakfast on promoting gender equality. Have you decided how you’re going to celebrate? Here are a few videos you can check out and share with friends and classmates!

1)     Join the movement: The “Half the Sky” movement, that is. This powerful documentary, which is based on the book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, will be streaming live online at 2pm ET on March 8th. Grab some friends and some popcorn and check it out!

2)     Start a discussion: Gather a group of peers or classmates and watch this TED Talk from Anthony Porter on how having “Act like a man!” constantly drilled into boys’ minds can result in the disrespect and mistreatment of women. Afterwards, talk about with the group and share some of your insights in the comments box on the video’s page.

3)     Get excited!: Have you heard about the amazing new “Girls Rising” film? If not, check out the trailer and get pumped about the new movie.

4)     Focus on the positive: Check out this Girl Effect video on how a girl realizing her potential can bring about change and share it with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Do you have any other great ideas on how to celebrate women and spread awareness about the battle to end violence against women? If so, share them with us in the comments section below or on Facebook.

Happy Women’s Day!

VOTE through March 1^st to help GCC build an app to connect youth to fight global poverty!

I nominated GCC for the Microsoft + GOOD Give for Youth Challenge, a competition that helps fund the dreams of young people around the world. GCC is building an app to connect young people to issues facing the developing world and to foster creative solutions to ending global poverty.

You can help GCC win the chance to fundraise for its app on GiveforYouth.org – we just need your vote!

To find out more about the app and to vote, follow these simple steps. It’s really easy!

1. Visit the GCC Project Page: http://bit.ly/voteGCC
2. Click “VOTE FOR THIS IDEA”.
3. Create a GOOD account with your email address or Facebook account.
4. Click on the link sent to your email account to complete the vote (check your Junk email folder).
5. Share with others on Facebook. That’s it!

Please spread the word to your friends and networks and help us get as many votes as we can so that other students like me can be part of Concern’s work to fight poverty.

The top 20 organizations with the most votes will get the chance to crowd-fund their projects on GiveforYouth.org. Best of all, Microsoft will match funds raised during the challenge phase up to $100,000 across all organizations.

You have until March 1^st to make your vote count. Thank you for voting to help inspire more students to fight global poverty!

Brett Hahn is a senior at Trevor Day School in New York City. As a Global Concerns club leader for the past 3 years, Brett has rallied his school community to take part in numerous campaigns and fundraisers benefiting Concern’s programs. Brett traveled to Kenya with Concern in 2011 as part of the GCC Annual School Overseas Field Visit. 

Photo: Zambia, Concern Worldwide

The world knew 40 years ago that it desperately needed clean, sustainable, modern energy for the developing world. 2 million people a year were dying by inhaling smoke from their cooking fires. 2.6 billion people lacked adequate energy. Unable to study at night, whole nations could not hope to ever compete in a world labor economy where knowledge increasingly commanded a premium: neither they, nor their children, nor perhaps their children’s children. They would, at best, continue to eke out a meager living from basic agriculture.

Yet for all that the world knew, there was precious little reason for optimism. The Kyoto Protocol died at Durban, South Africa, in 2011. Even if countries honored the minimal commitments they made there, binding emissions limits would take effect in 2020 at the earliest. The United States, joined by Canada, remained at loggerheads with China and India over the way forward. The political climate aside, help for the developing world was scarce. Developed countries slashed government expenditures as they struggled under debt loads that reached 200% of GDP in some cases. Private portfolio and direct investment did flow to the developing world, but primarily to commodity producers or countries that boasted low-cost, but relatively skilled labor. This meant that almost no private investment went where it was needed most: the resource-poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

What a pleasant surprise, then, that the world has in fact substantially reduced energy poverty. The absolute number living with inadequate energy access has declined by 24% to 2 billion people. Proportionally to population the reduction is no less dramatic. In 2010 it was about 37%. Today it is only 20%. The number of people perishing from dirty fuels has plummeted 75%, to only about 500,000 annually. Even in sub-Saharan Africa the improvements have been impressive. What explains this apparent paradox?

During the last forty years, the global population growth rate has moderated. Total population appears to be on track to stabilize within the next few decades. Africa was the last region to transition from high to low fertility, but it achieved this milestone over the past few decades. Total fertility has fallen from about 4.6 children per woman in 2010 to 2.4 now. As a result, Africa’s population growth has slowed substantially to about 1.5% annually. This has made providing energy to an increasing proportion of the population much more feasible.

East Africa benefited from oil and natural gas extraction from onshore and offshore deposits. Many countries that had previously suffered from meager exports and structural balance of payments deficits earned substantial export revenue for the first time. Some of these countries fell into the petro-state trap. They became overly reliant on their petroleum sectors, allowing a segmented labor market and ossified political patronage systems to limit their development possibilities. Most countries, however, used their foreign exchange earnings wisely to diversify their development efforts. Among the most successful were those that placed a heavy emphasis on modernizing agriculture through improved farming techniques and better seed stocks. As their economies grew, they also made substantial investments in distributed clean energy generation.

Building school solar lights (Photo: Liberia, Concern Worldwide)

Technical innovation played a very important role. Simple cook stove and LED light designs that could be fabricated locally and use locally produced energy are one example. 5 – 10 kilowatt wind turbines that can generate in very light wind from any direction and require little to no maintenance are another. Most important of all, however, was the dramatic political change that has transformed the developed world. Bloody battles rage inside the academy over the root causes. Nevertheless, a few trends and watershed moments are indisputable. One is the gradual waning of capitalism in the Anglo-American tradition. Many date this trend to the financial crises of 2008 – 2020, companies failed by the score, taking trillions of dollars in wealth with them. Rising popular unrest led regulation to make a strong comeback throughout the developed world, and strict limits were placed on financial gambles.

During the same period the 20th century American fairy tale ended badly. Young Americans realized that their parents’ living standard was unattainable for them. The social safety net constructed by their great-grandparents had shrunk to a mere safety patch. Many incurred huge education debts, only to find themselves unemployed in an economy that struggled to grow faster than the population. As a whole they became disenchanted with traditional capitalism and much more interested in social justice. More social ventures were founded in the ‘20s than in the fifty years before that.

Nithya Mehta’s successful presidential campaign of 2032 may have been the moment when green America bloomed. That year Tuvalu slipped beneath the Pacific, and surface ships first sailed the icefree North Pole. Although those events undoubtedly contributed to her victory, her strategy on carbon was the key. By painting carbon polluters as property rights infringers she masterfully fused anger over patently undeniable climate change with a deep American political tradition. This sea change in politics ultimately had a dramatic effect. American budget priorities today differ dramatically from those of 2010. USAID’s budget now is roughly three times what it was then in real terms.

Most importantly, though, the U.S. upended its prior approach to climate and energy policy. First, it took the lead in international climate negotiations. It proposed and funded a dedicated clean energy fund to assist developing countries mitigate carbon emissions. It also agreed to a global cap and trade system modeled on the EU’s. Second, it built offset mechanisms into its domestic carbon market, thereby incentivizing clean energy investment in the developing world. A more predictable regulatory environment combined with incentives led to a dramatic increase in investments in clean, sustainable energy both in the U.S. and in the developing world, including Africa.

Energy poverty remains a serious problem today. Yet measured against our past, we have much to be proud of. If there is one lesson to be drawn from the past forty years in clean energy and development, it is that the future may hold good surprises as well as bad.

Aaron Gardner was the US winner for Concern’s Global Writing Competition in 2012 in the college category. Enter for your chance to win in Concern’s 2013 Global Writing Competition!

“When I wrote my entry for the 2012 Concern Worldwide Global Writing Competition I was finishing up my M.A. degree in International Political Economy and Development at Fordham University.  The contest provided a wonderful opportunity to tie together so much of what I learned and at the same time to help raise energy poverty awareness.  I would encourage anyone interested in relief and development work to seriously engage with a relevant topic and submit an entry for this year’s contest.  You will be surprised how much you learn.”