Living our Mission
Teaching kids about hydroponic farming at VentureLab. Click here for more photos.
Entrepreneurship. We're working with a nonprofit called VentureLab to teach kids about agricultural entrepreneurship with a focus on new technology. By teaching kids about entrepreneurship, they learn that they can turn their ideas into reality and take an active role resolving agricultural problems. When they see problems or something that can be done better they have the ability to make a change or fill a void. Entrepreneurship also builds confidence, creativity, and problem solving, teaching them skills far beyond the immediate scope of our lessons.
Fighting Hunger. We work with the San Antonio Food Bank as both a produce donation source and an educational outreach group. We also use our partnership to get a chance to get our hands dirty, working in the soil to help their garden program!
Healthy Eating. One of our goals from the beginning has been to make fresh, sustainable food part of the diet of people everywhere. In places like San Antonio's Eastside, where good food is hard to come by, we are working with local organizations to build gardens and teach about food self-sufficiency.
Events
On October 18, 2014, Mitch Hagney spoke at TEDxSanAntonio. The theme for 2014 was Ideas in Action. TEDxSanAntonio is a nonprofit event organized by the community to discuss Ideas Worth Spreading. Speakers apply for the opportunity share an 18-minutes-or-less talk at the event. The talks are captured on video, live streamed on the web and shared with the community.
Distributed Urban Agriculture
While the majority of the population now lives in urban areas, the vast majority of our food still comes from far distant rural farms using increasingly destructive strategies to maximize their yield. All of a sudden, however, technology and the market are giving producers the opportunity to scale urban agriculture up to help make cities sustainable.
On August 26, 2014, Mitch Hagney presented at San Antonio's most recent PechaKucha 20x20 held at Carver Community Cultural Center. What's a PechaKucha 20x20, you ask? Its an evening of presentations where presenters show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and the presenter talks along to the images. PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps -- just about anything, really -- in the PechaKucha 20x20 format.
On Saturday, July 26th, Mitch Hagney spoke at a TEDxSan Antonio Salon entitled "Good Food for All: How Do We Do It?" The Salon offered a unique, interactive exploration of the issues that prevent San Antonians from having ready access to healthy, fresh foods.