Our Actions Matter, Earth Day at the Albuquerque Biopark

 SeedBroadcast was invited by Tallie Segel, Education Coordinator, at the Albuquerque BioPark  www.cabq.gov/culturalservices/biopark to join the Children's Seed Festival for Earth Day 2013. This "Our Actions Matter" festival was created to celebrate the connections between seeds, plants and human beings through various educational experiences. SeedBroadcast parked the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station at the entrance to the park to encourage families to explore the magic of seeds and seed saving.

Many young inquiring minds stopped to share their curiosity, to hold seeds, to examine them under magnifying lenses, to arrange them, to draw them and to ask questions. Many choose seeds to take home to plant in their gardens and to watch them grow. All we asked was that if the plants produced seeds that they passed them on to their neighbors and friends. Tallie made sure we had volunteers all day to help us interact with the crowds that came to visit. The volunteers adeptly learned the technical ins and outs of the Mobile Unit and quickly became experts at guiding visitors to explore our networking system.

Arranging different seeds.

Two of our wonderful volunteers.

Gabriel, who lived in Puerto Rico until the age of five, was one of our young visitors and shared this hopeful and heart felt story about planting a lemon tree and how this tree inspired him to help others to have access to healthy food. Here is Gabriel telling his story:
It was not only the children that became inspired, many of their parents, aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers were encouraged also to share stories. Kalonji told us his story of the mysterious tomato seed. During the day we broadcast some of our audio stories over loud speakers that are mounted on the roof of the SeedBroadcast Mobile Unit and we linked live to "Women's Focus" with Carol Boss http://www.kunm.org/programs/genre/news-talk who interviewed Jade Leyva and Isaura Andaluz, both active seed advocates. Jade is an artist, seed saver and organizer of SEEDS: A Collective Voice, an event and exhibition that was held at the Downtown Contemporary Gallery in Albuquerque and continues through June 8th 2103. (Read our upcoming blog for more details). Isaura, a New Mexican, is the inspiration behind Cuatro Puertas, who's mission is to connect New Mexico's urban economies with rural agricultural economies, and she is an activist for the important issues of chile politics in New Mexico. After their interview with Carol they visited us at the BioPark. You can listen to Jade in our previous SeedBroadcast blog and to Isaura talk about her seed saving work and why people should care.
We should all care, and by allowing our children open access to the magic of seeds, we might have a chance.