[Scpg] TEDxManhattan - Stephen Ritz - Green Bronx Machine - Growing Our Way Into A New Economy

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

TEDxManhattan - Stephen Ritz - Green Bronx Machine - Growing Our Way 
Into A New Economy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lcSL2yN39JM

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher/administrator.  With the help of 
extended student and community family they have grown over 25,000 pounds 
of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic 
performance. His Bronx classroom features the first indoor edible wall 
in NYC DOE which routinely generates enough produce to feed 450 students 
healthy meals and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in 
America.  Stephen has consistently moved attendance from 40% to 93% 
daily, helped fund/create 2,200 youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award 
for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, recently won the ABC 
Above and Beyond Award, helped earn his school the first ever Citywide 
Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health and 
attributes these results directly to growing vegetables in school. His 
speech at Columbia University, "From Crack to Cucumbers," along with the 
release of a You-Tube Video (Urban Farming NYC) resulted in a national 
following including an invite to the White House Garden. Dedicated to 
harvesting hope and cultivating minds, Stephen dreams of opening a 
nationally replicable Career Technical Education public school in the 
poorest Congressional District in America rooted in urban agriculture, 
green and sustainable initiatives. For more information, visit 
www.greenbronxmachine.com