Causes:
Agricultural Programs,
Food
Mission: The specific purposes of this corporation are to promote, raise awareness and educate about key environmental issues, including soil health, global warming, and nutrition. Additionally, this corporation may engage in any activities that are reasonably related to or in furtherance of its stated charitable purposes, or in any other charitable activities. 2017 programs include education, community learning gardens, storytelling, farmland and business education.
Programs: Education: we created a five-lesson middle school curriculum, in collaboration with life lab, that is supplemental to the soil story and the compost story. Additionally, we're working with captain planet foundation and a coalition of educational partners to create soil quest - an online platform that can be used by any classroom teacher. Soil-related curriculums from our partners (nrcs and other nonprofit partners) will be included in the quest.
storytelling: short films, campaigns, documentaries, books, social media, blogs, advocate training, and public speaking engagements. We create educational digital content about healthy soil and its potential to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. We have partnered with big picture ranch to publish the book kiss the ground and the full length documentary by the same name (currently seeking distribution for 2018 release).
garden: we have a garden for the community on city-owned land in venice, ca. The garden is a place where homeless youth are paid to intern, learn gardening, soil care, and composting, and are then placed in food-related jobs. All food grown in the garden is donated to homeless. Additionally, the garden is used as a gathering space for community events and classes, and welcomes volunteers from nearby schools regularly.
farmland: we connect restaurants with local farmers building healthy soil to source one menu item from these farms. This menu item raises 2 from every dish sold for a scholarship fund for farmer training. We'll establish an advisory board to evaluate scholarship applications. Applicants will be able to apply for a scholarship to the soil health academy or to a program of their choice to be evaluated by the advisory board. In 2018, our goal is to start the program with 10 restaurants in santa barbara and los angeles, and in 2019 to scale the program nationally. Business: we're creating simple, accessible resources including: a literature review of soil carbon sequestration science, case studies of businesses investing in healthy soils and farmer profitability after transition to soil building practices, and resource lists that identify supply chain resources, working groups, standards, farmer-trainers, scientists, and experts.
