Project to turn Hartford residents into micro-farmers aims to address food insecurity
It’s essentially flipping the script on the current model of food being grown in the suburbs and shipped into the city, which is one of the worst food deserts in Connecticut.
By Ted Glanzer
Hartford Courant
Apr 29, 2022
Excerpt:
An idea six years ago to help residents of Haiti with food insecurity as part of a Boy Scouts Eagle Project led to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Levo International’s world headquarters in Hartford on Friday.
Christian Heiden was a 16-year-old student at Northwest Catholic High School in 2016 when he decided that he wanted to grow food in Haiti, a notorious food desert, through hydroponic technology, which enables farming without soil.
“Social justice and service has been a fundamental part of my upbringing,” Heiden said. “The emphasis on social justice and creating systems that work for everyone and serving is really important throughout my childhood.”
The Boy Scouts nixed the idea because, among other things, it wasn’t practical to send a teenager to Haiti to build hydroponic farming systems. (Heiden wound up building a hydroponic greenhouse at his high school for his Eagle Project.)
Heiden, now 22 years old and a UConn graduate, didn’t let go of his initial idea and he founded the nonprofit Levo — Latin for lift — in 2017 to address food insecurity in the tiny island nation.
Levo thus far has provided several hundred Haitians on the central plateau with hydroponic systems to grow fruits and vegetables.
