By Kyle Michaud, Keene State College Student

The earth is going through some really rough times right now. Never before have we had to deal with this much disease, “natural” disasters, and as a nation, our economy and environment is under severe stress as we continue to kill it slowly with too much emphasis on profits and big gains in a short amount of time. To be truthful, I am feeling the same way. Financial, family, and personal problems add up and trying to balance school, socializing, and maintaining relationships and partnerships is tough to do in these days of oversaturation of media and never ending to do lists.

That’s why I want to do the work I do. Through my actions, beliefs, and thoughts I hope to bring a sense of peace, love, respect, and unity to myself and others. While Globalization increases our interconnectedness through electronic means, it has brought about many setsbacks to match its brilliant advances. In Western, mechanically based countries, we lost a connection to the land and our fellow man. It’s unfortunate that we have a reliance on machines and products or jobs overseas. What is fortunate is that there are many who recognize such issues and are working to solve our current problems.

One of the biggest issues we are facing right now deals with food. Too often we have foods shipped from thousands of miles away, many not even from this country. The pesticides on these foods and toxic waste, created from such massive factory farms and plants making overly processed foods with a paragraph of ingredients, is terrible for the health of this earth and for the humans who consume such products.

My work for this internship will be based upon bringing our focus back to local and organic food producers and distributors. In turn, such a whole foods diet will reduce disease and allow for healthier individuals and consequently healthier communities, states, and even entire countries.

Originally Posted on Project for Public Spaces Website

As cities struggle to do more with less and people everywhere cry out for places of meaning and beauty, we have to find fast, creative, profitable ways to capitalize on local ingenuity and turn public spaces into treasured community places.