An Eagle Project not to be denied - feeding Haiti

[RememberSchiff]

Someone contact Steve Hartman at CBS to report this story

Christian Heiden was a 16-year-old student at Northwest Catholic High School in 2016 when he decided that he wanted to grow food in Haiti, a notorious food desert, through hydroponic technology, which enables farming without soil.

“Social justice and service has been a fundamental part of my upbringing,” Heiden said. “The emphasis on social justice and creating systems that work for everyone and serving is really important throughout my childhood.”

The Boy Scouts nixed the idea because, among other things, it wasn’t practical to send a teenager to Haiti to build hydroponic farming systems. (Heiden wound up building a hydroponic greenhouse at his high school for his Eagle Project.)

But Scout Heiden could not let go of his original Eagle Project idea...the rest of the story at source

https://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-news-hartford-levo-vertical-farming-20220429-jwzh7rrhn5fflkkg6wqfzxpz2i-story.html

P.S.

“The overall maintenance of the system is less than five minutes,” Heiden said. “There’s no bending over, there’s no weeding. It’s compact.”  👍

Edited April 30, 2022 by RememberSchiff

[fred8033]

Overall, a nice article.  Good story.  

I had to get past my natural reaction to:  "oh oh, another negative BSA story."   BSA was emphasized to make the story more interesting.  "The Boy Scouts nixed the idea ..." ... Reality is some subset of a volunteer (or volunteers)) AND the scout could not find a combination of right choices and right ideas to make it a viable project.  Another option was the scout could have designed and built some number of hydroponic kits that were shipped to Haiti for re-assembly by a receiving volunteer organization (school, church, etc).  ... It's never as simple as BSA nixed the idea ... as if "BSA" (national) knew anything about the project. 

[MattR]

It's still a great project. At 16 it was gear to grow food. At 22 it was that plus teaching people how to grow food. Clearly not a typical scout.

[DallasStyle1]

What a great article. Thanks for sharing it. This really deserves to be highlighted.

[RememberSchiff]

@DallasStyle1welcome to scouter.com.  In the upper right  across from the topic title, you can rate by selecting a number of stars to highlight topic.

Edited May 4, 2022 by RememberSchiff

[InquisitiveScouter]

19 hours ago, DallasStyle1 said:

What a great article. Thanks for sharing it. This really deserves to be highlighted.

Welcome!