Farm
Launch Pad to a Better Life Purdue volunteers teach sustainability to at-risk youth By Lori Darvas | Photography by Carole Toplain
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edible INDY Fall 2017
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here’s a quote floating around the internet. The verbiage varies, but the gist is the same: You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can’t count the number of apples in a seed. A group of current and former Purdue University students are endeavoring to plant the seeds, figuratively and literally, to feed generations of some of the state’s neediest residents. They are members of Earthonauts, a nonprofit group aiming to inspire sustainability in everyday lives. Their first focus: urban communities with tenuous sources of fresh food. “The idea behind it is to promote sustainability in communities,” says Chris Kulesza, an Earthonauts vice president and Purdue PhD candidate in political science. For the past year, the group has been working with residents of the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center in Crown Point. There, Earthonaut volunteers work with small groups to present hands-on lessons in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as well as sustainability. These lessons focus on more than growing food: They also stress the need to be both economically and socially sustainable, so their efforts will continue long after the teachers have gone home. “We want Earthonauts to be more than growing tomatoes,” says Jocelyn Dunn, a Purdue PhD program graduate, who co-founded Earthonauts last year with Purdue graduate Katie Chustak. “Maybe we can pair with a small restaurant where the kids learn financial responsibility and teamwork. Maybe they can grow lavender and make essential oils. We’ll teach the environmental resource aspect and how to sustain any project. We’ll show them how to have the community behind them and make sure it’s benefitting the community.”
