Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, Founder and CEO: A seasoned social justice organizer, educator and environmentalist, Margaret Morgan Hubbard has a fertile mind practiced in translating ideas into action. Morgan-Hubbard is committed to mentoring young people in creating meaningful and purposeful lives, and to finishing the equity work her generation began, but lost track of. She is particularly interested in providing venues and opportunities for diverse groups of people to collaborate together toward a better, more peaceful and just world that respects Mother Nature.
Christian Melendez, Edmonston Urban Farm Coordinator: Christian Melendez lives with ECO City Farms to grow food, fertility, and farmers. He coordinates ECO City Farms’ production and sales of farm produce. He began farming while a student at University of Maryland where he sowed seeds at Engaged University’s Master Peace Community Farm for 2 years. While at the University, Melendez created and led two Alternative Spring Break trips focused on the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. For two summers, he taught gardening and nutrition to middle school youth as part of the Free Minds Collective, and at ECO City Farms has taught Community Composting under the Commercial Agriculture Certificate program with Prince Georges Community College and at the Sowing Seeds Here and Now! Urban Farming Summit. Melendez is a graduate of Growing Power’s Commercial Urban Agriculture course. He is a graduate of the Mid-Atlantic Better Composting School and a Certified Maryland Compost Facility Operator. He hopes you’ll discard the term “waste,” read the Humanure Handbook, and cultivate SOIL, not OIL!
Adam Schwartz, Farmer and Builder: Adam Schwartz is a young farmer, perennial tinkerer, ecological designer and environmental educator. He has several years experience in leading, organizing and facilitating community-based initiatives, including the Renaissance Youth Bike Shop and the Green Guild Biodiesel Cooperative. Adam studied climate policy while at the University of Maryland but his passion is in cultivating community resiliency. Schwartz has worked on organic farms from New Hampshire to Ecuador, and in 2010, began studies in ecological design and green building at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont. Adam recently launched a commercial gourmet garlic farm on historic farmland in the Patuxent watershed. He lives in Mount Rainier, MD in his 1989 school bus, “The Appleseed,” which he converted into a sustainable living lab.
Benny Erez, Senior Technical Advisor: After years working in an academic setting doing agricultural research, Benny Erez brings knowledge of theoretical and practical farming technology to ECO City Farms. He is passionate about the need to wean ourselves off the gas-guzzling commercial fertilizers and replace them with sustainably produced compost. His experience with composting technology comes from years of managing the University of Maryland Central Maryland Research and Education Center Compost Facility and visits to Austrian compost enterprises. Erez’s first-hand knowledge of the power of community comes from his experiences growing up on a Kibbutz in Israel. He believes that the human race is facing many environmental challenges and that local, sustainable food production is part of the solution.
Sonia Keiner, Community Educator: Sonia Keiner has worked closely with ECO staff on a number of previous gardening, community youth education, and mural projects. An experienced teacher and educator, she has taught and organized diverse learning experiences for adults and youth of all ages in English and Spanish. She received her MA in 2006 at the University of Maryland in education policy and leadership with a concentration in multicultural education and her BS in psychology from Towson University in 1998, where she played on the school’s basketball team. Keiner is also a professional photographer. In 2010, she created and co-facilitated Dish-It-Fresh, a farm-to-kitchen cooking program for teenage counselors at The Orchard School in New Hampshire which incorporated farming methods, nutrition education, food systems analysis, and meal preparation twice a week. This summer, Keiner will teach a similar program at ECO City Farm in collaboration with the Port Town’s Youth Council and New Immigrant Farmer trainee, Rose Tsigereda Sesero.
Tsigereda (Rose) Sesero, Community Educator: Rose Sesero is an experienced Chef who spent the past year apprenticing at ECO City Farms in our New Immigrant Farmer training program in conjunction with Crossroads Market. Sesero gained experience working at a number of area food service businesses and other establishments to better understand how to launch her own food-related enterprise. In the Summer of 2011, she will join Sonia Keiner in teaching area youth about all aspects of growing, preparing and eating healthy nutritious foods.
Jeremy Krones, Outreach Coordinator: Jeremy Krones studies Environmental Anthropology at the University of Maryland. Raised in southern Frederick County, he was taught at a young age the core values of community, sustainability, and adaptability. He applies these principles to his leadership roles on campus, holding officer positions in multiple student organizations, many of which are community service-based. Krones has spent most of his summers lost in the woods, backpacking in mountains of New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Montana. In the summer of 2010, he backpacked over 600 miles on the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to central Virginia. After high school, Krones took a year off from academia to travel and work on organic farms around Europe and Israel. His growing interdisciplinary interest in culture, the environment, and community service led him to spend a week with a small organic farmer in Jamaica at the end of August 2011, and these interests continue to influence the way he lives and communicates with others daily. Krones hopes to farm– not to earn living, but as a way of life, regardless of what else he does. He would like to share this sentiment: “We do not work for peace, but rather for equality. You can have peace without being equal by quieting a voice, but once you have equal voices, peace will come naturally.” – Brian Wedderburn, Rasta farmer and fisherman
