How students hope to feed the hungry in city's food desert

Camden's LEAP Academy has a plan to feed city residents.

CAMDEN -- Home to one supermarket and about 77,000 residents -- with two out of every five living below the poverty level -- the United States Department of Agriculture calls Camden a "food desert."

A joint effort by the LEAP Academy University Charter School and Rutgers University, with $50,000 in funding from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board, aims to address the city's nutritional woes with a "food forest."

"The whole idea is to bring green back to the city," Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, LEAP's founder, said of future fruit and vegetable gardens at LEAP campuses off Cooper Street.

The effort began as a contest entry and a way to address poor nutrition in Camden. It was such a success that it was the national winner of Rutgers-New Brunswick's first-ever Social Justice Challenge.

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On Tuesday, LEAP debuted the series of planting boxes that will grow into community gardens come spring. School officials say the challenge is both finding affordable food in Camden, which has just the Price Rite supermarket along Mount Ephraim Avenue, and safely growing food in the city.

"Gardening in Camden means overcoming a series of roadblocks -- including contaminated soil, air pollution, poisonous water and dumping of polluted items in the city," said Bonilla-Santiago.

Matthew Closter, a Rutgers research assistant and PhD student studying community development, said he expects LEAP high school marketing students to devise a program that will eventually sell the bounties of these gardens. The team from LEAP and Rutgers will plan to use the academy's fabrication center, 3-D printers and robotics material as the program progresses.

"Growing food is empowering," said seventh-grade LEAP student and Camden resident Ariane Sabat, who will be one of the many students tasked with maintaining the gardens.

Sabat said her parents go grocery shopping at ShopRite and Acme -- neither of which are in Camden. Once the gardens are growing, she hopes to see tomatoes, carrots and onions.

Nathaniel Torres, a ninth-grader and environmental justice club member, said the project will go a long way to addressing community relations.

"We've never seen something beautiful like this in Camden before," said Torres. "It's really just a drive-by city. We're just trying to improve it. This is a small part of what we want to do."