Margo Schall ’11 is working with Our School at Blair Grocery, an alternative community school and urban farm in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans.
In her own words: “I specify my location only because it really does determine the nature of our work. Our neighborhood is a food desert, by all definitions. In this context, it starts to make sense that Our School brands itself as “a resource-rich safe space for youth empowerment and sustainable community development” with its energies focused primarily on establishing a system of sustainable community food security.
My role involves a lot of farming and composting. Because Our School is still new and our staff is still small, we get to have a hand in all aspects of the good work. So, like all of us, I do some beekeeping, some participating in classes with our high school students, some sprouting in the shade house, some after school programming with the youth in our immediate neighborhood who come around, some egg collecting, some building. I help coordinate volunteers – a lot. We have hundreds coming through this summer as part of the Food Justice Summer.”