The day kicked off with our keynote speaker, Cam Juarez, who is a Park ranger at Saguaro National Park (Tucson) and identifies as a Latino who is physically disabled. Cam runs the Next Generation Ranger program, which specifically recruits young people of color to get into environmental careers.

The Santa Cruz River was once a beauty that connected the residents of Tucson to nature, but now is the biggest trash bin in the county. Sonoran Institute has recognized this and has dedicated their efforts to bring it back to its original beauty, hoping that this lost relationship will return as well.

Recently, a small group of Earth Grant and College of Architecture and Planning (CAPLA) students got the opportunity to go on a group hike up to Rock Spring in Saguaro National Park, East. This is a place where the saguaros, sacred plants to the Tohono O’odham tribe, grow big and tall.

“My father always encouraged my sister and I to be ‘global citizens,’” says Earth Grant student and Engineering sophomore Ani Melichar. Through Earth Grant, Ani is working with people from all over the world, by supporting the International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s New Roots program, an initiative to support recent refugees to Tucson in gardening, food production, nutrition, and generating revenue through farmers’ markets.

Earth Grant student Paloma Martinez spends every Tuesday morning at Midtown Farm, in the Barrio Centro neighborhood of Tucson. Working alongside farm managers Jacob Robles and Brandon Alexander, Paloma walks the produce rows at the farm to see what vegetables are ready for harvest.

My name is Jazz and I love working with plants. So much so, I have a collection of 159 houseplants at home! I worked at Awareness Ranch through the Earth Grant program for the Fall 2021 semester, and part of my work has been working with integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. Awareness Ranch is a small local grower, who uses aquaponics systems in greenhouses to produce herbs and vegetables.

"Water bottle, plastic bag, another plastic bag, a piece of… soda bottle? Plastic...I think this one is an auto part, yeah? Another, no, two more plastic bags…” Jamie Irby, UArizona Environmental Science senior, points and describes half-buried trash items as she slowly walks a transect in the seasonally dry Santa Cruz River in Tucson.

The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona’s mission is to, “change lives in the communities we serve by feeding the hungry today and building a healthy, hunger-free tomorrow.” While much of their work involves distributing donated and purchased food to people in need at over 300 sites in Southern Arizona, they also work towards strategies for long term food security, such as local agriculture, food production education, and civic engagement training.