Strawberries will be a smash-hit with the kids! Watch and cook along today with the world premiere of Episode 6 of Tower to Table to Tummy – featuring Superfood Strawberry Salad! Beyond harvesting straight from our Tower Garden®, this recipe focusses on seven plates of ingredients: teach your little ones sevenths!
Tune in and get your fractions, aprons, cutting boards, and napkins ready! DELICIOSO!
For upcoming Full Episodes, SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel.
As you know, we’ve been working with Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility helping young men harvest hope and heal their lives as they work towards a better, brighter future. At the heart of the facility is a greenhouse that grows food, hope, jobs, and opportunity. We were proud to build the first greenhouse that serves foster care youth in America. And for those who’ve helped support the mission, we say: THANK YOU!
In honor of National Nutrition Month we couldn’t be prouder of our partnership with Newman’s Own Foundation who has helped us celebrate the spirit and legacy of Paul Newman with their generous donation and this heartwarming video:
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Newswise — BRONX, NEW YORK — February 28th 2022 – Green Bronx Machine announced today that it has been named Best Brand Campaign, Best Non-Profit Campaign, Best Special Project, Best Local Community Engagement, Best Community Outreach, and Best Innovation in Education, Art, & Culture in the Inaugural Anthem Awards.
Anthem Winners are selected by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Members include Daniel Dae Kim (actor, producer, and activist); Ashley Judd (Author, Actor, and Social Justice Humanitarian); Mitchell Baker (CEO and chairwoman, Mozilla); Lisa Sherman(president and CEO, Ad Council), Sarah Kate Ellis (president and CEO, GLAAD); Renata Erlikhman (chief investment officer, OW Management); Shayla Tait (director of philanthropy, The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation); Russlynn Ali (CEO and co-founder, XQ Institute); Marc Ecko (chief commercial officer and board member, XQ Institute); Heidi Arthur (chief campaign development officer, Ad Council); and Alexis M. Herman (chair and chief executive officer, New Ventures, and former U.S. secretary of labor).
In the last year alone, Green Bronx Machine has distributed more than 130,000 pounds of food, reclaimed over 10,000 pounds of food from landfill, produced 5,000-plus pounds of produce grown locally in the Bronx, built and stocked three new food pantries, delivered weekly 152 backpacks of food to students and fulfilled more than 1,600 emergency food requests from families in need. Recently named 2021 Social Innovation Award winners, Green Bronx Machine was named NYC Food Policy Center COVID Food Hero. Green Bronx Machine has trained nearly 1,500 teachers using their Classroom Curriculum, impacting more than 50,000 students throughout the Bronx, across America, and around the world.
“It is our distinct honor to recognize the work that brands, organizations, and individuals are all making to create an impact in their community,” said Jessica Lauretti, Managing Director, The Anthem Awards. “We launched this platform to show the world that all corners of our culture, from sports and entertainment to business leaders and celebrities, are all standing up to say, it is time for systemic change and that social good is what we value as a society.”
“We could not be more honored to have our work celebrated across multiple categories, from the Bronx to the world!” says Stephen Ritz, founder of Green Bronx Machine. “Our program is proven to grow happy, healthy children, high-performing schools, and resilient communities while addressing social determinants of health and food security in communities that need it most. Recognition from Anthem Awards – especially in its inaugural year – is further evidence that our program is poised, ready, and able to scale and replicate across the nation and nurture the next generation of social justice champions. From our humble corner of the globe, we might just change the world.
”Winners for the inaugural Anthem Awards will be celebrated at the first annual Anthem Voices conference followed by a star-studded virtual Awards Show on Monday, February 28, 2022. Fans will be able to hear from social impact leaders during the day and then watch the show, featuring special moments, and hallmark speeches from all the winners at www.anthemawards.com.
The Anthem Awards was launched in response to the prevalence social good has taken within the national conversation and cultural zeitgeist in recent years. The inaugural competition received nearly 2,500 entries from 36 countries worldwide. By amplifying the voices that spark global change, the Anthem Awards are defining a new benchmark for impactful work that inspires others to take action in their communities. A portion of program revenue will fund a new grant program supporting emerging individuals and organizations working to advance the causes recognized in the inaugural Anthem Awards.
Green Bronx Machine won 6 – that’s right, SIX – Gold Medals from Anthem Awards and we want you to join us as El Capitan goes live from the classroom to give our acceptance speech. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve always said we are stronger together and after being nominated, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences announced:
Green Bronx Machine is a GOLD MEDAL WINNER in SIX categories!!!
TUNE IN and watch the virtual, star-studded, on-demand Awards Show featuring special moments and brilliant speeches from all the winners – including El Capitan LIVE from the classroom – on Monday, February 28 at www.anthemawards.com.
All of this happens because of support from you – our friends and family. From our humble team, we want to thank each and every one of you for making these awards possible – it’s all about impact!
We are so honored to be recognized in this way as a community – from the Bronx to the world – and look forward to MAKING EPIC HAPPEN for years to come!
Newswise — Bronx, N.Y./Secaucus, N.J, Feb. 15, 2022: Green Bronx Machine, a transformational educational nonprofit helping students and teachers turn classrooms into agricultural learning experiences, today announced a collaboration with the Quest Diagnostics Foundation, that will enable Green Bronx Machine to reach students in 30 underserved schools in Colorado, Ohio, and New York.
In these classrooms, students and teachers will grow vegetables using the Tower Gardens® aeroponic growing system and use plant life to teach multiple subjects including science, math, and language arts. Beyond academics, the food grown is used to enhance the health of the students and their communities through improved nutrition.
“The best investment we can make is in our youth,” said Stephen Ritz, CEO and founder of Green Bronx Machine. “I want to help grow the next generation of high performing schools, highly successful students, and happy, healthy and high-performing teachers. With the support of the Quest Diagnostics Foundation, we’ll be able to significantly expand our reach, increase health equity, create more opportunities for historically underserved communities and, through all of this, make a better world.”
Ritz, an internationally acclaimed award-winning educator, founded Green Bronx Machine as an after-school program to engage failing students. The program utilizes urban agriculture and education to help support the needs of food insecure individuals, educate minds, and feed students and their communities. To date, Green Bronx Machine’s project-based learning program has engaged over 100,000 students in 20 states and six nations, generating significant academic student achievement and increased graduation rates, improved health outcomes, and key insights into how food justice, food access, and overall well-being are interconnected.
One major supporter of Green Bronx Machine is Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City. According to Adams, “Improved nutrition education in our schools will be critical to combat the chronic health conditions found in our communities, which are due in large part to limited knowledge of, and exposure to, healthy foods among our youth. Green Bronx Machine has found an innovative way to tackle this and will continue to play a crucial role in supporting the healthy development of our communities—one student at a time, one community at a time.”
The Quest Diagnostics Foundation, as part of the Quest for Health Equity (Q4HE) initiative, is providing a grant to Green Bronx Machine to support expanding its programming to 30 schools. Q4HE is a multi-year initiative of Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) and the Quest Diagnostics Foundation focused on providing a combination of donated testing services, education programs, partnerships, and funding to support initiatives to close the gap in healthcare disparities in underserved communities.
“We are proud to team up with Green Bronx Machine in supporting its mission to educate and inspire young people while creating better health outcomes for their communities,” said Ruth Clements, President of the Quest Diagnostics Foundation. “In doing so we are helping to reduce health care disparities in underserved communities.”
The Quest Diagnostics Foundation will support Green Bronx Machine to expand its reach into lower-income communities, with a focus on strengthening access to nutritious food while inspiring students through dynamic educational experiences. These schools will receive: Green Bronx Machine’s licensed curriculum; the Tower Gardens® aeroponic growing system which students use to grow vegetables; professional development and coaching for educators, and ongoing programmatic support to ensure successful outcomes.
“With the help of the Quest Diagnostics Foundation, we will be able to increase access to nutritious food while delivering proven, data-driven, project-based, hands-on, innovative, educational opportunities,” said Ritz.
Take a trip to California, Arizona, and New Mexico today for the world premiere of Episode 5 of Tower to Table to Tummy – featuring Super Southwest Salad! Beyond harvesting straight from our Tower Garden®, this recipe focusses on ten plates of ingredients: teach your little ones tenths! It’s our most complex recipe yet!
Tune in and get your fractions, aprons, cutting boards, and napkins ready! DELICIOSO!
For upcoming Full Episodes, SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel.
Thanks to all who have reached out recently. Each and every day our inboxes fill and snail mail continues to arrive – we thank you and we appreciate you. The outpouring of love has been amazing. While we continue to mourn and cope with the ongoing complexities of life, make no doubt about it: WE REMAIN STRONGER TOGETHER! We thank you and we appreciate you.
Speaking of stronger together, this month we are rolling out a new cohort of 30 schools across the country in partnership with Quest Diagnostics® dedicated to Cultivating Health Equity. Imagine: 30 new classrooms complete with Green Bronx Machine Curriculum, a Tower Garden®, classroom supplies, fully trained teachers, and all connected to one another via the internet. Overseas, we will be connecting additional Bronx schools with partner schools, with the ultimate goal of connecting 1 MILLION STUDENTS globally for dual and shared learning. Talk about inspiring healthy living and learning – our children and teachers are so excited! This is the impact we dream of and the movement this moment calls for.
Speaking of impact, 2021 saw Green Bronx Machine receive numerous awards and accolades, including Classy’s 2021 Social Innovation Award, Controlled Environment Agriculture’s Disruptor Award, National Life Group Foundation’s LifeChanger of the Year Award, TMZ’s COVID Food Hero, and appearances in a BBC Film Feature, the Tamron Hall Show, El Capitan’s Interview with Mayor Eric Adams, the amazing testimony of El Capitan to US House of Representatives, and so much more. Building for the future, we even completed a five year strategic plan in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers. To that end,we are PROUD TO SHARE OUR 2021 IMPACT REPORT with you!
If not us, who? If not now, when? From the Bronx, to the world, all of this amazing impact happens because of kind donors and supporters like you. You are the lifeblood of our work and we thank you and we appreciate you. We can’t stop, we won’t stop! And it all starts with you. Please continue to support our work today!
We’re headed straight to Italy today for the world premiere of Episode 4 of Tower to Table to Tummy – featuringCaprese Insalata! Beyond harvesting straight from our Tower Garden®, this recipe focusses on nine plates of ingredients: ninths! Did you know that 3/9 = 1/3? Learn why and how while making a delicious meal.
Remember, El Capitan loves children who slice the cheese – not cut the cheese – in class. Tune in and get your fractions, aprons, cutting boards, and napkins ready! DELICIOSO!
For upcoming Full Episodes, SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel.
The newly sworn-in Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is interviewed by Stephen Ritz in 2020 while he was Brooklyn Borough President. They talk in depth about his career, health, wellness, school food, and his visit to Green Bronx Machine to cook with students.
Partnering with Quest Diagnostics to bring Green Bronx Machine programming and curricula to multiple cities across America
Welcoming new board members, including Linda Femling (Google), Ana Garcia (NY Presbyterian), Joel Makower (Green Biz), Catherine Nelson (Columbia Threadneedle Investments/Ameriprise Financial)
And the world, our peers, and media have noticed! We were proud to:
Win the Classy’s 2021 Social Innovation Award
Win the Artemis Controlled Environment Agriculture’s Disruptor Award
Win TMZ’s Food Hero Award
Win NYC Food Policy Center’s Food Hero Award
Win National Life Group’s 2021 Lifechanger Award
Join the board of the Association of Vertical Farming
From the Bronx, to the world! In 2022, we will be embarking on Year 1 of our five-year strategic plan, developed in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which will bring Green Bronx Machine to 20,000 schools throughout the country. We are poised, ready, willing, and able to do the work! Our work has always been organic and grassroots, supported by local people who love and appreciate what we do and how we do it: one child at a time, one classroom at a time, one school at a time, one community at a time. Today, we are asking for your support. Be it $1 or $100,000! Every drop of kindness helps fill the cup and gets us closer to making epic happen!
Green Bronx Machine Donates Newman’s Own Foundation Gift to Outfit Tiny Home Kitchens
Newswise — LAVALETTE, WV, December 16, 2021 – Green Bronx Machine Founder Stephen Ritz joined with Stepping Stones, Inc. and its Youth Transitions Project (YTP) leaders to mark the growing tiny-home village with two soon-to-be completed additional homes and the framing out of a third. Stepping Stones is the revolutionary foster care facility in the heart of Appalachia.
Longtime supporter and urban farmer Ritz also announced that Green Bronx Machine (GBM) will pay forward a generous $25,000 donation from its partner, Newman’s Own Foundation, to Stepping Stones to outfit all homes’ kitchens with appliances from local retailer Big Sandy Superstore. In addition, GBM has spearheaded a “Fill Them with Love” campaign, providing each tiny home with all the household supplies needed for to start a first home.
YTP is a public-private partnership focused on youth ages 16-21 transitioning from foster care or experiencing homelessness. The project’s centerpiece is a tiny-home village. Its goal is to support disconnected West Virginia youth as they transition into adulthood so they may reach their full potential and become productive, contributing citizens. When completed next summer, there will be eight tiny homes, a village school that provides high school equivalency and career and technical education classes, a building and construction certification program, a substance treatment program, and a commercial greenhouse that provides residents with healthy foods combined with employment, paid sustainable farming skills building, and employment and job coaching and placement.
“This holiday season, GBM is delighted to provide these young people the tools they need to eat and prepare healthy food for themselves rather than depend on cheap, fast, convenient food. Fostering good nutrition habits is key to Stepping Stones and YTP’s intentional, multi-dimensional program designed to help these youth as they successfully pave their pathway to adulthood and independent living,” said Ritz. “In this process, all of us – Stepping Stones, Newman’s Own, GBM and Big Sandy – want them to know they are loved, supported and valued.”
Ritz and GBM have been working with Stepping Stones since 2018 on its Growing Hope initiative – a commercial greenhouse with 20 sustainable gardens using Tower Gardens® aeroponic growing systems on property. Using GBM’s propriety curriculum, Stepping Stones youth are trained to manage the greenhouse, growing their own food and donating excess to local communities in need.
“Green Bronx Machine has been a catalyst in helping us to follow our passion and making dreams come true by pushing us to think outside of the box and literally feed our boys with hope,” said Susan Fry, executive director, Stepping Stones. “Stephen and Lizette Ritz are family to all of us and this amazing GBM donation, thanks to the generosity of Newman’s Own Foundation, is a blessing for our tiny home residents. Just as importantly, it shows our young people the power of partnership and working together to make a positive impact.”
Capping the festivities, Big Sandy Superstore’s delivery truck arrived at the tiny-home village and Fry, Ritz and others helped unload five refrigerators, five stoves, and five sets of stackable washing machines and dryers.
“Most of us don’t crash land into Life. We benefit from the experience of life-long co-pilots, maintenance crews and navigators. Now imagine bringing your craft in successfully with neither solo flying experience or any of that support,” said Don Perdue, president of Stepping Stones, Inc.’s board of directors. “That is what aging out of foster care is like. The crash is almost inevitable.”
All the tiny homes are the result of a large, caring community of supporters, funders and volunteers, including Pallottine Foundation of Huntington, Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, Milan Puskar Foundation, Newman’s Own Foundation, Green Bronx Machine, Cabell Huntington Hospital, Toyota Motor Manufacturing WV, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, Sprouting Farms and Transition, West Virginia Schools of Diversion, Marshall University, Wayne High School CTE Engineering Class, Tolsia High School CTE Class, Truist Bank, Bernard McDonough Foundation, Braskem America Neal Plant and interior designers Pam and Tammy Watts, among others.
About Stepping Stones, Inc.
Established in 1975, Stepping Stones, Inc. is a fully-licensed child welfare and behavioral health provider with over 46 years’ experience working with West Virginia’s troubled and troubling youth and their families. The therapeutic milieu is family-centered and youth-focused and provides youth with an opportunity to enhance cognitive competence, internalize coping skills and develop an “I Can” attitude. Through restructuring, reeducation and reintegration, Stepping Stones seeks to strengthen the youth’s relationship with family and community. The Program firmly believes that discovering and uncovering the connectedness of the youth and his family with the community is paramount in treatment delivery. For more information, visit https://steppingstonesinc.org.
About Newman’s Own Foundation
Newman’s Own Foundation is an independent, private foundation formed in 2005 by Paul Newman to sustain the legacy of his philanthropic work. Funded entirely through the profits and royalties of Newman’s Own products, the Foundation does not maintain an endowment, raise funds, or accept donations. The Foundation believes that each of us, through the power of philanthropy, has the potential to make a difference. Since 1982, when Paul Newman first declared, “Let’s give it all away,” more than $550 million has been donated to thousands of nonprofit organizations helping people in need around the world.
Ritz and the other honorees – leaders in business, government, nonprofits and advocacy – exemplify the optimism and idealism that make New York a national leader.
I am humbled and very proud to be among the leaders called out by City & State for my work with Green Bronx Machine,” said Ritz. “For far too long, those least responsible for injustice, inequity, failing education, health disparities, poverty, social and environmental racism have had to bear the brunt of the burden and consequences. Social responsibility means moving those who are apart from success to becoming a part of it in ways that benefit everyone. High-performing schools, happy, healthy children, living wage jobs – we are farming and growing citizens and success at Green Bronx Machine.”
Each year, City & State shines a light on socially responsible leaders in New York with The Responsible 100 Award. The award honors 100 of New York’s most outstanding responsible executives, thought leaders, visionaries and influencers who are setting new standards of excellence, dedication and leadership in approving their communities and making transformative change. See the full list of honorees and read about these extraordinary individuals HERE.
About City & State Magazine
City & State a New York-based media organization dedicated to covering New York’s local and state politics and policy. Our in-depth, non-partisan coverage serves New York’s leaders every day as a trusted guide to the issues impacting New York. We offer round the clock coverage through our award-winning commentary and analysis, weekly publications, daily e-briefs, interviews and events.
