2025: The Story So Far
2025 is our 10th year trying to make sustainability and applied STEM accessible to all. But it has been a challenge no doubt. The calendar here shows the journey so far. Our $100K operational budget was slashed by $75K in March with the loss of three big grants. There were 12 kids who had been training to be leaders for three months. I could not let these kids down. But now I am in great danger.
Mezzacello Project Fire Soap
A guest camp blog post by two middle school campers at Mezzacello charged with converting waste weeds and wood into ash to mix with glycerine and lye to make soap.
Fishacello Artificial Wetland
This is a guest camp blog from the underwater science team at Mezzacello Urban farm. Theo and Maxwell are the MenTerns in Charge of this experiment. Today we created a platform for the Fishacello Artificial Wetland.
MenTern Update 2025
The MenTerns for 2025 are a fun and eclectic group. Artists, Engineers, Biologists, Veterinarians, Geneticists, and Industrial Warriors! This year, the MenTerns are really stepping into their own space and I couldn’t be more proud. This is the MenTern update 2025.
Maxwell Is Incredible
Hello Sarah! My name is Maxwell, I'm 12 years old, and I'm one of Jim's MenTerns at Mezzacello. As a MenTern I help Jim teach all of the kids at camp. This week the theme for our camp is all about wind power and how we can use it.
Entanglement, Information, Uncertainty, and Poker
This is a guest camp blog from my MenTern Grady at Mezzacello Urban farm. Grady was in Charge of this creative way of teaching quantum entanglement and uncertainty to camp kids using a modified poker game. It was a lot of fun and a surprising way to model superposition for kids to understand.
The Mezzacello MENTERNS Tetrahedron of Character
This week is session two of my training regimen for the 2025 Mezzacello Urban Farm MENTERNS program. The MenTern (Mentor + Intern) program is a training camp that teaches young students innovative ways to build character, confidence, and mastery of their actions, intentions, and impacts. This is one tool I use to achieve that.
Introducing Mentors + Interns (MenTerns) Programming
This year in 2025 we will be evolving our intern project to the next level. 2023 and 2024 interns will be returning to Mezzacello Urban Farm to help teach and manage camps. This year, the seasoned kids will also be serving as mentors to newer interns and to the camp kids. So in honor of thois deeper level of engagement, we created the mentor/intern hybrid portmanteau “Menterns”. So this is a blog post Introducing Mentors + Interns = “MenTerns” Programming.