TeamFAME’s Composting Project Yields Heathy Returns
FROM COMPOSTING TO APPETIZER
In the spring of 2022, TeamFAME 5th graders received a composting assignment. The coaches at TeamFAME helped students with this homework, and to cultivate an enthusiasm for sustainability within the kids, who began their assignment by composting at the Canfield Learning Center. This year, TeamFAME expanded its composting efforts and the students’ responsibility to a new level with support from the ITHF’s Official Sustainability Sponsor, 11th Hour Racing.
Students created a Compost Crew to raise awareness of their efforts. Among other things, the Compost Crew designed informative posters and practiced presenting their pitches to meet with Hall of Fame employees. The Compost Crew received a unanimous vote that each employee would be willing to compost. After placing compost bins in the kitchen of the ITHF main offices and elsewhere on the property, each Wednesday the Compost Crew collected the compost and placed it curbside to be picked up by Clean Ocean Access.
TeamFAME students also shared their passion for composting with the community through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Community Center. TeamFAME 8th graders planted and tended to two garden beds for the MLK Center at Aquidneck Community Table’s (ACT) Great Friends Community Garden. At the start of this summer, TeamFAME harvested eight pounds of lettuce and donated all subsequent harvest to the MLK Food Pantry. As MLK’s summer camp got underway, TeamFAME 8th graders returned to the Center to teach the campers how to care for the garden themselves, even reading an educational book to the young MLK students.
11th Hour Racing additionally provided support for two raised garden beds, assembled by TeamFAME students to sit outside the Canfield Learning Center. Here, students planted bean seeds, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, and pumpkins. These vegetables have been carefully cared for all summer long.
At the start of August, TeamFAME's diligence in the Canfield Learning Center Garden began to pay off. Students harvested cherry tomatoes and eggplants from their raised beds that were enjoyed during a cooking lesson from a TeamFAME Student alumna, Noemy. The experience was especially rewarding for students to see their effort and diligence pay off.
TeamFAME’s composting efforts this year will come full circle at the Sunset Slam. The dinner will feature a bruschetta appetizer including eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash grown by the TeamFAMErs in their on-site gardens.
