E46: A teacher raises $200k for a school garden to reconnect kids with nature & alleviate food insecurity | Sonya Harris of Bullock Garden Project in NJ

I am very excited to close this season of the podcast with Sonya Harris. Sonya is a special-ed teacher turned garden educator and philanthropist.  In 2017, she established the nonprofit Bullock Garden Project to share the joy of gardening with her community and help alleviate food insecurity. She teaches kids and adults to grow their own food. Her tireless work and enthusiasm has inspired many of her former students to pursue careers as future green industry leaders. Sonya’s work in garden-education began when she was looking for creative ways to teach her students math. As a teacher, she did whatever it took to get her kids to learn, and that sometimes meant taking lessons outside the four walls of the classroom. When she witnessed the success of her outdoors teaching experiment she got the idea to start a community garden. Sonya rallied together and was able to source nearly $200,000 in donations to put together a prolific school garden. This garden brought notoriety to her and her school, helped feed her students, and launched her second career into non-profit work full time. Since then, she has consulted countless schools, teachers, and town leaders on ways they can build a similar garden project in their own community. In our conversation we speak about the pandemic’s effects on food insecurity, the harsh realities of our desperately underfunded public schools, why teacher’s voices need to be heard, and the problem with politicizing education. We speak about how Sonya fell in love with gardening, how she was able to fundraise for her school, and why now more than ever, we need to prioritize kids’ health and wellbeing.This is a story about the power a person has to do radical good, the importance of great teachers, healing communities through self-reliance, and the beauty of a life dedicated to service.To read her full feature visit: www.urbanexodus.com/blogSupport the showSign up for  Apple Podcasts premium or our Patreon Membership for ad-free listening, rapid-fire guest interviews & our new mini-pod Ditch the City. urbanexodus.com | @theurbanexodus | buy the book