Partnerships
Sustainable Agriculture is proud to partner with the following groups in our community. Click on an organization to learn more about the work we're doing together. We are always open to forming new partnerships. If you are interested in partnering with Sustainable Agriculture, please email our coordinator Lucy Davis (davislh@cofc.edu).
Charleston Area Beekeeping Association
Office of Sustainability at the College of Charleston
Audubon South Carolina
Audubon led a guided birdwatching walk through the Stono Preserve this spring in conjunction with one of student garden volunteer workdays.
Boy Scouts of America
In the fall of 2018 we began a partnership with Boy Scouts of America to give one troop the opportunity to earn their Messenger of Peace badge during a visit to Stono Preserve. Cub Scouts Pack 79 visited the garden to learn about peaceful conflit resolution through gardening activities requiring them to work together as a team, be generous, and give thanks. The Cub Scouts participated in four stations to learn about growing plants, composting, controlling weeds, and the history of Thanksgiving. The Cub Scouts earned their badges and were eager to return!
We continued this partnership last week by having the Scouts paint gourds grown and dried at the garden. The gourds were cleaned out and can be hung and used as birdhouses!
Charleston Area Beekeeping Association
Our partnership with CABA began in March 2017 and will be funded for 3 years through a a generous donation from Mick Wiser and a grant from The Golden Pearl Foundation, a North Carolina charity that provides grants to support arts, youth and the environment. The purpose of this collaboration is to provide space for CABA's educational apairy consisiting of five bee hives. Honey has been harvested from the hives and we participated in honey inoculation. Through this partnership, CABA will train two beekeeping apprentices and hold educational events at the Stono Preserve. Rebecca Fanning, a concurrent EVSS/MPA grad student, is CABA's first apprentice and was recenlty featured in The College Today.
Read more about our partnership with CABA here.
Rebecca Fanning tending to the bees.
Destiny Community Café
Located in North Charleston, Destiny Community Café offers a Pay-What-You-Can menu to serve locally sourced, Gullah Geechee rooted soul food cuisine! We have donated our produce to the cafe since Spring 2020 and will continue to provide food for the folks in need!
Check out our highlight with Destiny Community Café
The Green Heart Project
Our garden staff have partnered with the Green Heart Project, a non-profit organization based in Charleston, to share their knowledge and love of gardening with elementary-aged students in the Charleston area. Our staff have interacted with students in the classroom and in the garden and have provided supplies for educational activities. In the fall, we led multiple lessons about the importance of helpful insects in our gardens. Students made 'insect hotels' by painting tin cans and filling them with leaves and sticks to create a warm place for insects to live through the winter. We look forward to partnering with Green Heart again for future lessons.
Our student gardens workers have partnered with the Green Heart Project to create Garden-at-Home videos. Check them out here:
How to Compost - Tomato Planting - Greenhouse Gardening
Healing Farms Charleston
Our partnership began in Summer 2020, where we have started a seasonally planting and educational series with the participants of Healing Farms. Healing Farms is a local nonprofit that offers opportunities for special needs high school graduates to continue contirbuting to their community by developing skills that cultivates independence. This partnership allows us to continue pursuing our mission of making sustainable agriculture accessible to all!
Office of Sustainability at the College of Charleston
We enjoy partnering with the Office of Sustainability to host workshops and other events on the College of Charleston’s campus.
One80Place
This nonprofit organization's mission is to end homelessness by providing goods and services to the homeless community. We have partnered with One80Place to co-host an event during the College of Charleston's Center of Civic Engagement's participation in the Hunger and Homlessness Awareness Week. During this event, we joined together to organize a harvest to donate to One80Place. Read more about the event in our highlight here!
South Carolina Aquarium
A Turtle Garden, where we grow sustainable organic lettuce, has recently been added to the Student Garden in 2017. The lettuce is donated to the South Carolina Aquarium and is used to feed the rescued green sea turtles who reside there. Sea turtles can eat 5 percent of their body wieght in lettuce each day! Any leftover lettuce is fed to other reptile inhabitants at the aquarium, such as tortoises and lizards. This project was funded by The Golden Pearl Foundation, a North Carolina charity that provides grants to support the arts, youth, and environment. We are currently providing lettuce for three sea turtles, Luna Lovegood, Madam Pompfrey, and Fawkes!
Read more about our partnership with the Aquarium here.
The Stone Soup Collective
Most of our produce is donated to The Stone Soup Collective, a local nonprofit that makes healthy, plant-based soup for Charleston residents. The nonprofit sells soup at various locations around Charleston and distributes free soup to seniors in North Charleston. The Office of Sustainability partners with the Stone Soup Collective to provide free soup on campus once a week during the semester. Produce from the student garden that is commonly used in the soups include kale, collards, garlic, and onion.
MUSC
This summer, we are conducting tours of our downtown gardens for elementary and high school students through the MUSC Heart Healthy Campaign! Students will learn about fresh vegetables, composting, food deserts, herb gardens, water resources, and pollinators.