Author: Melissa Schilling

الشمس لم تقل للأرض ابدا "أنت مدينةً لى". انظر ماذا حدث لمثل هذا الحب. لقد أضاء السماء كلها

Worms 101

Melissa Schilling Urban Agriculture

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HOPE Art Haiti Vermicomposting Project Overview

Project Overview: Through a process called vermicomposting, food scraps are fed to worms and transformed into a nutrient-rich compost for plants and gardens. Vermicomposting can help businesses and schools save money.

VermiCompost Bin: Wooden bins can be constructed by students, staff, or parents. The size and number of bins needed will depend upon the amount of food scraps produced by your school. Roughly one square foot of worm bin is needed for each pound of food waste produced per week. For example, if your school generates 30 pounds of food scraps each day, five days per week, you will need 150 square feet of bin space to handle the 150 pounds of food each week. Five bins that are each 4 feet by 8 feet (32 square feet) will give you a 160-square-foot area for food scrap recycling.

Worms: Two species of red worms, eisenia foetida and lumbriscus rubellus, work best for vermicomposting but they can’t tolerate high temperatures. Composting worms do night like light. They will do whatever is necessary to escape the light. So keep your compost bins completely dark.

WORM 101
10 year old Jared helped me with phase 1 of this vermicomposting project: Working with Worms for the First Time.
I picked up a carton of live red worms from a nursery for $14.99 for 2lbs of worms. They were in a refridgerated case, chilled. Like wine, but they are worms. Ha!

Jared cut two San Jose Mercury Newspapers into strips and put them into an old plastic bin. He added about 3 cups of water. Then topped that off with leaves and food waste from the Green Bin in his backyard. We added rosemary and chamomile from his front yard so it wouldn’t smell too badly.
Then we added a bit of peat moss and dirt and finally the worms.

The bin is stored on my back patio in partial sun/shade with the top of th ebin ajar to allow oxygen to flow freely. The dirt feels and looks mostly moist, but not wet. I do believe my red worms are having a grand old time chomping waste into usable top soil as we speak.

143

Melissa Schilling Fundraiser 1 Comment

One Hundred Forty Three Dresses for Haiti have rolled in from all over the world!

For anyone not familiar with pager text code from the 1990’s,
the number 143 means I Love You.

So to commemorate 143 dresses, hand sewn for Haiti, is very special.

At this time we need money to transport all the dresses to Haiti. We’d like our artists to hand deliver them to the orphanage in Carrefour. Please donate anything you can by clicking here.

A special thank you to all the amazing seamstresses who continue to send in homemade sun dresses for HOPE Art’s Dress Drive. Our original goal was 30 dresses, a new one for each girl, and our count as of today is 143 and still climbing! It’s been incredibly heartwarming to watch them continue to come in.

For those of you that may not have sewing skills, but would like to support this project, HOPE Art has a new Kickstarter campaign running that we would like to also serve as a dress delivery trip in January. Only 6 days are left to reach our goal and receive all the money that has been pledged so far. Please consider skipping a latte for a day and donating even just $5 to make this special trip happen. Every little bit helps, thanks!

P.S. This pink dress is the very first one we ever received.

Thank You Cleanwell!

Melissa Schilling Thank Yous

500+ children played with and hand sanitized
30 pounds of rice and beans consumed
8,000+ photos snapped
30 sets of watercolor paints thoroughly used
250 bean seeds germinated
Countless CleanWell hand sanitizer spray bottles handed out to children in 3 cities in Haiti

and more smiles than we can count.

….
Cholera is an illness caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Infection with the bacterium causes acute intestinal distress with diarrhea and vomiting. Severity can range from mild to dehydration and death. While the industrialized world is virtually cholera-free, many parts of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia have cholera in epidemic proportions.

Use caution when traveling to cholera-infested areas. Wash with hot, soapy water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer frequently, especially before handling food and after going to the toilet.

Read more: How to Treat Cholera | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_2048527_treat-cholera.html#ixzz1Zq5U0TKp

a few of our favorite drawings from the August trip to Haiti . . .

Melissa Schilling Art Projects

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We believe that there are not words as powerful as a single drawing, sock puppet play, mural, photograph or creative enterprise. Using art as a catalyst for healing and expression we intend to initiate whimsy and wonder while infusing creativity into disaster stricken communities. So often children are not part of the conversation within a hard hit, natural disaster area. We bring their ideas, thoughts and emotions to life in full color regardless of language, creed or custom. We do this using art as the Universal Langauge.

I draw, U draw is a step by step process of teaching students to draw objects, animals, people and landscapes. It builds confidence, self-esteem as well as trains the artists’ eye and fine motor skills. Students explore watercolors, oil pastels, colored pencils and other media as ways of finishing their drawings. This is also the basis for our literacy program where students drawings will be used in a book naming each of the drawings in english, kreyol and french.