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Survival Training for Families: Teaching Kids Self-Reliance Skills In today’s fast-paced world, instilling the principles of self-reliance and survival skills in our children is more important than ever. Survival training for families not only prepares kids for unexpected situations but also fosters independence, confidence, and problem-solving abilities. This guide delves into the art of teaching kids practical skills that could one day be life-saving. Understanding Self-Reliance for Kids Self-reliance in children is about nurturing their ability to care for themselves and make decisions independently. It’s a blend of critical thinking, problem-solving, and responsibility. Such skills are crucial for personal development, bolstering confidence and adaptability. By learning these skills early, children can navigate life’s challenges with ease, benefiting their education, social interactions, and future careers. Incorporating Survival Training for Families into Everyday Learning Gardening Gardening is a hands-on way to teach children about nature and self-reliance. It’s an opportunity for them to learn about seeding, growing fruits and vegetables, composting, and even creating natural pesticides. These activities not only serve science objectives but also improve their reading, following instructions, and math skills. Engaging in gardening helps kids understand the importance of nurturing and patience, key components of emergency preparedness and outdoor skills. Barnyard Activities The barnyard is a treasure trove of learning opportunities [...]

Last chance for subsidized KinSHIFT workshops! Are you a farmer located in B.C. wondering how to engage meaningfully with the Indigenous lands you steward? KinSHIFT, an Indigenous-led organization, hosts essential online trainings about cultivating better relationships with Indigenous peoples and places. Young Agrarians has received funding to subsidize the cost of participation in the kinSHIFT workshop series, Elements of Truth: Before Reconciliation for B.C. farmers and food provisioners. We are thrilled to invite you to join us! Elements of Truth: Before Reconciliation is a 4-part workshop series rooted in Indigenous values. Guided by reciprocity, inclusion, curiosity, and humility, our learning journey unfolds over four weeks, with four powerful 2.5-hour sessions. Get ready for an informative, interactive, and impactful experience! For every farmer who signs up, funds are dedicated to IndigenEYEZ in support and solidarity with Indigenous youth. DATE OPTIONS: This is your last chance for subsidized trainings! 🌱Mondays: Oct 7, 21, Nov 4, 18 | 9:30 am – 12 pm PST 🌱Wednesdays: Nov 6, 13, 20, 27 | 6 - 8:30 pm PST TRAINING DISCOUNTS: You can choose a 90% off or a 50% off discount code to register. You are welcome to use whichever one fits your budget. If cost is a barrier to participating please let us know- we will send you a 100% off code. HOW TO REGISTER: Send [email protected] an email with: 🌻 your name 🌻 name of the farm you work on (or your context within the food system) 🌻 location Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eEb2Jvnp

Always hire Teachers.🍎 They can do anything with creativity, and they will make everyone feel welcome. Since March when our Farm Season began, The Nicotra Group Team has hosted nearly 3,000 people from the tri-state area who wanted to experience Nicotra Grown Organic Rooftop Farm and take an educational tour. Today, for example, we have two tours set to join us- and when tours are booked for the same time period, we split into groups - Group A, Group B, Group C - to make sure each group has a personalized experience. To stay organized, we came up with group tags, as seen below, and named the groups after what we grown on the Farm. It's a great ice breaker, it's a simple community building tool - guests of all ages love to be in a group or on a team - and it makes people smile when they can call us 'Arugula', 'Basil', 'Cucumber' or 'Daisy'. #ClassroomManagement techniques gleaned from my mother, a lifelong second grade teacher, or learned from Lois Nicotra - a teacher before she was an entrepreneur, and still an educator in our work-life - or learned from my own years teaching over a decade at St. John's University are employed daily in macro and micro ways. My own daughter, Grace Garlisi, who starts her career as an educator in the weeks to come, worked as a Farm Educator for Nicotra Grown Organic Rooftop Farm this summer, perfecting our tour scripts and educational materials, and hosting visits from public and private school administrators to build a robust #classtrip program for our 2025 season. We are now booking Class Trips with our Archdiocese of New York, Charter School and NYC Department of Education community colleagues for next year, all through our [email protected] email and personalized to the educational level of each group. The teachers on our team made that approach happen. 🍎 And if I am your guide, I'll be wearing a nametag on a tour too, so if you see me, feel free to shout "Arugula" - I'll answer with a smile, and add a fact or two about #urbanagriculture. We have #teachers and school staff at our Front Desk at our Hilton Garden Inn Staten Island, in our Corporate Office, and throughout our company - some are still studying for that career, some are working two jobs, some are retired and looked to us for their part-time retirement career (and travel benefits!). All of our Teacher-Team Members add so much to the equation at work. As back-to-school approaches, they may have less time for us - but we appreciate their service to our schools and communities. Teachers build tomorrow in their classroom. There's no greater qualification to join a team than someone who can shape the future. #work #hiringperspectives #everyjobmakesthestay #hr #hospitality #worklife #educators #careertransitions #career #careeropportunities

🌟 Empowering Villagers with New Skills: Our Data-Driven Learning Platform 🌟 At Dots for, we understand the transformative power of knowledge, which is why we’ve launched a service tailored for villagers on our platform to help them learn and acquire new skills. This initiative is rooted in careful data analysis, with content carefully selected by our diligent teams based on community interests and needs observed over time. Our platform offers a user-friendly and simplified design, making it easy for villagers to navigate and access practical, relevant knowledge. Whether it’s mastering new agricultural techniques, gaining vocational skills, or learning how to manage a small business, the content is crafted to be both accessible and highly effective. What sets this service apart is the thorough review process each piece of content undergoes, ensuring it’s not only useful but also precisely aligned with what will benefit the community the most. After engaging with the material and applying their newfound skills, users can earn certificates that serve as testimony to their achievements. This will certainly enable villagers to enhance their livelihoods and seize new opportunities. Together, we continue to build foundations for sustainable economic growth and prosperity in rural communities. #EmpoweringVillagers #SkillDevelopment #DataDrivenLearning #CommunityGrowth 

A Question for Educators: How do we teach sustainability in a way that sticks? At WaterUps® we believe in learning by doing. That’s why we’re helping schools and Early Learning Centres across the country turn their gardens into living classrooms. When students grow their own food, they learn lessons that last a lifetime. What’s one practical way you’ve brought sustainability into your classroom? 🌍#Education #Sustainability https://lnkd.in/g48uKznV

Our GreenSource Sports for Water facility at Kayamandi Primary School continues to grow in size and impact. Launched in November 2023 in a partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a consortium of Dutch companies, the initial phase included a state-of-the-art artificial football pitch that doubles as a water harvesting reservoir, a wastewater management system, and a water purification plant, bringing clean drinking water, sports, food security, and dignity to a severely impoverished community. Germany-based Global United FC provided funding to overhaul the school's vegetable garden, tapping into the potential impact of the GreenSource wastewater management system. Kayamandi-based NGO 'Love to Give' came on board, first to help with infrastructure development and currently, to manage the beneficiary programme: besides providing fresh produce for the school's feeding scheme, another 55 beneficiaries have been able to support their families from the garden as well. Next, Wärtsilä from Finland donated funds to GreenSource project to produce an educational booklet to make the science behind the Sports for Water system fun and accessible to the 1,500 learners of Kayamandi Primary. This year, another Dutch company Leafspring invested in the maintenance of the facility after visiting Kayamandi in March. And in the past week, Global United introduced more German partners to the project: Pro football team SV Wehen 1926 Wiesbaden GmbH and their team sponsor BRITA Group. Together, we: 🌊 Doubled the wastewater management system’s storage capacity; 🚿 Installed additional water lines and taps for irrigation and gardening purposes; 🏡 Erected a stunning little garden shed fitted with taps and storage space where the Love to Give beneficiaries and school can safely keep their tools; 👢 Gave water boots to Love to Give's 50 new beneficiaries, as well as to the school’s garden manager, Elton.  🚨 Replaced a corrugated shack at the school's main entrance with a modern security booth.  ⚽ Organised fun football games on the school’s artificial pitch between local boys and girls and professional German and Stellenbosch Football Club stars (and did the same on Ikaya Primary's Open Play pitch); 🚰 Gave every child a BRITA water filter bottle. When the kids return to school tomorrow, they’ll enter a space they can be truly proud of; one that provides in their recreational, sports, educational, water and food security, and general safety needs. At Open Play, we believe in impacting communities through collaboration and partnerships. In this way, social investments in infrastructure are maintained more sustainably; communities benefit from having access to individuals and organisations that are experts in activating spaces and running programmes; and resources - whether capital or operational - are utilised more optimally, enabling the provision of deep-impact initiatives. This has been a good week! 🌱

Indigenous community in Brazil promotes traditional foods in school meals Can you share how important school meals are in the Quilombo do Campinho community; how are children and the indigenous community benefitting?  “The Brazilian National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) is supported by a federal law that serves the public-school community in Brazil, and this is very important in various ways. Firstly, it emphasizes providing quality food for school children. There are studies and research on how children cannot learn if the food they are receiving is not nutritious. School meals, especially in traditional communities, integrate ways of life, ways of eating and producing food. If a child goes to school and eats unhealthy overprocessed food, for us, that’s a setback, because it’s not good for their health and their learning. The legislation ensures students can have access to quality and nutritious traditional foods in a country that has a historical demand, increasing in recent years, of people without access to nutritious food… Secondly the school feeding programme addresses an extremely important issue for farmers to sustain the critical traditional agriculture in their territories, communities, and places of origin where they live and organize socially. It is a law that recognizes traditional communities by their collective representation, which practices solidarity economy in their way of life. We organize ourselves as a formal group at the quilombo, so we are a priority within the programme, which is advancing more and more. It was very important to have women included in the priorities starting last year. Today, women in formal groups have priority to provide their agricultural produce for school meals. Tell us about the work you are doing in the area of school meals in your capacity as coordinator of two entities, all supporting school meals. I want to briefly say that this is a very opportune moment, because I am part of a discussion in Brasília which is advancing an agenda to build the national policy for agroecological and organic products. It is a great challenge to review the agroecology law and I am representing the Observatory and the Forum of Traditional Communities in this council.” Colombia also has a traditional school feeding program for Indigenous children that utilizes an “olla communitarian” or community pot. For more information, see my recent presentation: The Role of School Feeding Programs in Alleviating Hunger and Building Sustainable Food Systems: A Global Perspective (2024) https://lnkd.in/gfN5vyEG #schoolfeeding #schoolnutrition #schoolmeals #foodandculture #indigenousknowledge #traditionalknowledge #indigenouspeoples #brazil #foodsysytems #foodsystemtransformation #sustainablefoodsystems #agroecology #agroforestry #foodpolicy #dietitians #nutritionists #nutrictionistas #community #communityorganization #communitydevelopment

In the world of dog training, one command stands out as essential for fostering a well-behaved canine companion both indoors and outdoors: "Place." While often associated with indoor training, the significance of teaching dogs to understand and respect "Place" extends far beyond the confines of four walls. Here's why mastering "Place" outdoors is crucial for both dogs and their owners: Safety and Security: When venturing outdoors, dogs encounter a myriad of stimuli—from unfamiliar scents to unpredictable noises. Having a designated "Place" provides dogs with a sense of security and stability amid these external distractions. Whether at a bustling park or a quiet trail, knowing they have a familiar spot to retreat to helps dogs feel safe and reduces anxiety, ultimately enhancing their overall outdoor experience. Boundary Setting: Outdoors, the concept of boundaries becomes even more critical for dogs. Teaching them to go to their designated "Place" establishes clear boundaries and expectations, preventing them from wandering off or engaging in undesirable behaviors such as chasing wildlife or approaching strangers without permission. By reinforcing boundaries through "Place" training, owners can better ensure their dog's safety and control in various outdoor settings. Focus and Distraction Management: Outdoor environments can be highly stimulating for dogs, often leading to difficulty in maintaining focus and obedience. Incorporating "Place" training into outdoor sessions helps dogs learn to tune out distractions and concentrate on their handler's commands. This enhanced focus not only facilitates better obedience but also strengthens the bond between dog and owner as they navigate outdoor adventures together. Practicality and Versatility: Unlike indoor settings where "Place" may be a specific mat or bed, outdoors, "Place" can take various forms—a designated spot under a tree, a portable mat, or even a specific area of grass. Teaching dogs to recognize and respect "Place" regardless of the outdoor environment enhances their adaptability and makes outdoor excursions more manageable and enjoyable for both dog and owner. Enhanced Freedom and Enjoyment: Ultimately, mastering "Place" outdoors grants dogs a newfound sense of freedom and autonomy while ensuring their safety and well-being. Whether lounging in the backyard, picnicking at the park, or exploring nature trails, dogs can confidently navigate outdoor spaces knowing they have a secure spot to call their own. This freedom allows them to fully embrace the joys of outdoor adventures alongside their human companions. "Place" training isn't just for indoor obedience—it's a fundamental aspect of fostering a well-rounded and well-behaved canine companion, both indoors and outdoors. By instilling in dogs the concept of "Place" and reinforcing it consistently, owners can empower their furry friends to navigate the great outdoors with confidence, safety, and enjoyment. #place #dogtraining

Imagine a garden where some plants are thriving in the sunlight ☀️ while others are drying out 🥀 . As a gardener, you don’t discard the struggling plants; instead, you nurture them back to health. You provide water, adjust their soil, and ensure they have enough space and support to grow. This is who I choose to be in my career: a gardener for people's potential. Nothing beats seeing individuals bloom in ways they never thought possible. Just like plants, people need unique environments and care to thrive. Whether they need attention, information, guidance, or simply someone to believe in them, I am here to provide it. Let’s cultivate a garden where everyone can grow. 🌱🌻 #Counselling #Mentorship #PersonalGrowth #Empowerment

Check out this article featuring one of the American Landscape Institute's amazing graduates! #horticulture #nursery Q&A with Samantha Hardeman - Nursery Management (nurserymag.com)