Sussex Middle School

Students at Sussex Middle School are building a greenhouse to provide food for the breakfast club. While waiting for the greenhouse materials to arrive at their rural community, they implemented a composting program!

Sussex Middle School

Students at Sussex Middle School are building a greenhouse to provide food for the breakfast club. While waiting for the greenhouse materials to arrive at their rural community, they implemented a composting program!

The Problem

Food scarcity and sovereignty are issues across the country, including in rural communities. More and more youth are using food banks and school-run breakfast clubs are often an important way young people can access healthy food. However, for true food sovereignty to happen, it’s important that youth themselves are involved in creating and running these programs.

The Solution

Students from the Earthlings Climate Club at Sussex Middle School in New Brunswick wanted to do something to help and so decided to build a greenhouse with a local contractor. The students believe building the greenhouse is an important part of that, by having a building dedicated to a solution prominently part of their school’s complex. They have been growing food for their school’s breakfast club and hope to expand to providing produce to the cafeteria and local food banks.

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students and teachers made up the Earthlings Club working on the project!

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fellow students and educators engaged with the project through Education Outreach Contests that the club hosted.

Lessons Learned

Building community matters! The Earthlings started out with a small but mighty number of students who felt like no one at their school was really talking about climate change. However, their numbers eventually began to grow as students began joining because their friends were part of the club and it was a fun social thing to do after school. These new students began learning about climate change and now they’re passionate advocates too! Everyone’s path to climate action looks different and it’s important to think about the social aspect.

“Without Net-Zero and their team seeing our vision and acknowledging our passion for sustainable education, this project would not have been possible. Big projects like these just aren't possible on rural school budgets alone, so we really do appreciate being chosen for funding. Thank you!”

Jenna Bateman, Teacher Lead

"Physical hands on is definitely what I learn through mostly, and I feel like we should do more hands on because it's way easier to learn"

Lyla, Earthlings Club Student Lead

Sussex Middle School greenhouse built through the N:OW for Net-Zero program.

Related Lesson Plan

Science

Industry & Manufacturing

Grade 7

ON

Composting

Composting turns organic waste into soil carbon, which reduces landfill methane emissions in the process! In this lesson, students will watch the cycle of composting and record their observations. Students are encouraged to see what it woul... read more

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