Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

5.10.11 | We’ve previously written about PandoProjects, a New York City-based nonprofit working to help members of the millennial generation develop new solutions to community problems, and the inaugural group of 15 project leaders selected to “tackle a global challenge in an innovative, local way.”

Back in January, the project leaders received online tools, funding and mentorship to develop grassroots projects that tackle problems or gaps in education, the environment, and unemployment, among other topics. They were given four months and an online platform to raise support and funding to turn their ideas into action.

I checked back in on the projects this week and found an encouraging interview at Food+Tech Connect. Food blogger Chitra Agrawal talks with Ying Guo, whose goal was to help kids start a community garden in the South Bronx. Guo has been working with early childhood education programs in New York City such as Head Start to grow their own community gardens.

In the interview, Guo discusses how the online workspace that PandoProjects provided helped make it easier for her to launch Growing Gardens Growing Kids:

The workspace provided by Pando Projects allowed me to share my project idea, to recruit volunteers, to fundraise, to update project members, to organize through an event calendar, and to blog about the progress of my project. It has been extremely useful to have all these options in one website. People who are interested can directly join the project or donate to it directly from the site. Without this platform, I would have been using many separate links and resources and would not have been able to direct donors and friends to just one website.

The preschoolers, of course, get to eat what they grow. And Guo is also training teachers to integrate curriculum that educates preschoolers about where food comes from, how to grow fresh produce and what foods are healthy to eat.

Read the full post and learn what an EarthBox is here. 

Read about PandoProject’s other pilot leaders on its beta site and in this piece at The Epoch Times. The first round concludes this month.