by Caciques Jessica and Austin

Today was the first academic day with the entireIslandSchoolstudent body reunited! It was a typical Monday, except for the fact that we kicked off our morning with a 3-hour Human Ecology Class. This was not a normal class.  We came up with ideas for our Human Ecology Final Projects.  Students thought of problems they saw around campus and also greater issues of Eleuthera and The Bahamas, and created a project to try to solve them.  It is cool to have a class where the work you are doing actually makes a change in the world.

The final project that we (along with 3 others) created was to try to get food waste from local institutions to local farms, including The Island School farm, to feed our pigs. One main hotspot that we were able to identify was Princess Cays. This is a port for Princess Cruise lines. They make all of their food in the port. We recognized that all their scraps of food could be reused for pigs. Pigs eat anything! This would not only feed the pigs, but it would supplement the local farmer’s spending on costly pig feed, reduce the amount of trash, and create more opportunity for pig farming throughout Eleuthera. Other projects included making a local food cookbook, acquiring milk goats to graze the old golf course across the street, and attempting to ban Styrofoam throughout Eleuthera. We’re excited to get these projects started and work in the real world.