Students: Cate Adams, Emma Clopton, Isabelle Spirk, Julie Wright (Southside Permaculture Park), Ava DeLauro, Zelalem Ayalew (ImmesED)

Ethical Decision-Making Methodology 

Case Study: While trying to develop a low-cost syringe for the developing world context, you (the designer) hit a crossroads. Constructing the syringe to auto-disable after a single use, an important safety feature, significantly adds to the cost of the design – making it potentially unaffordable for some hospitals and clinics. However, if you don’t add the safety feature, you are enabling the potential for the spread of disease. How do you as a designer proceed?

Step 1: Determine the facts in the situation – obtain all of the unbiased facts possible. Clearly state  the ethical issue. 

1. The auto-disable safety feature is important for minimizing the spread of disease 
2. The safety feature makes the product less affordable for primary stakeholders
3. Sometimes, syringes may be reused without a sterilization process
4. In developing nations, the likelihood of clinics having abundant access to syringes is less than in the developed world, increasing the chances of spreading diseases through reusing unsterilized needles. 
5. Some form of safety feature/indicator is needed to reduce disease spread and handle the drug properly. 

Step 2: Define the Stakeholders – those with a vested interest in the outcome

• Hospitals/clinicians, patients, regulatory bodies (FDA), insurance companies, manufacturers, the designer

• Patients & their family members because they are directly affected 
• Healthcare workers because they are directly involved in the administration of the drug
• Hospitals/clinicians because they are involved in the offering and admin of the drug 

Secondary Stakeholders: 

Step 3: Assess the motivations of the Stakeholders 

• Patient: Get better
• Hospitals/clinicians: Provide quality care safely 
• Regulatory bodies: Ensure safety and legality  
• Insurance companies: Ensure safety of patients; reduce liability on the company
• Manufacturers: Provide quality devices for user-friendly administration 

Step 4: Formulate (at least three) alternative solutions – based on information available, using basic ethical core values as guide 

Solution 1: Provide a how-to user guide for sterilization and/or disposal of the device

• Ethical Principle or code: Legal

• Pros: No need for an auto-disable feature, therefore removing the added expense
• Cons: Can be confusing; you have to learn the proper way to manage post administration of the drug prior; can be time consuming; cannot ensure that steps will be fully followed; could be costly

Solution 2: Revise the design to be more affordable, collaborate with other manufacturers and explore other prototypes 

• Ethical Principle or Code: Consequence- based thinking
• Pros: Finding an affordable solution; will be easier for stakeholders to access the drug
• Cons: Could delay time in releasing the drug for public use

Solution 3: Add a user warning label that explicitly states that the drug device is single-use and must be properly discarded

• Ethical Principle or Code
• Pros: Does not substantially increase cost of production, lifts liability off the company’s shoulders
• Cons: Can be easily ignored, therefore increasing the chance of the syringes being reused. If syringes are reused, a disease could spread in communities that could have been avoided. 

Step 5: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate – engineering codes of ethics, previous cases,  peers, reliance on personal experience, inner reflection 

– Previous designs of other medical technologies that were made with safety features cost-effectively

– Insight from other designers 

– Insight from hospital staff regarding staff training 

– Ethics codes in healthcare administration 

– Insight to how the patients feel using the design 

Step 6: Select the best course of action – that which satisfies the highest core ethical values.  Explain reasoning and justify. Discuss your stance vis-a-vis other approaches discussed in the class

Solution 3 – Add a user warning label 

This solution makes it so that users would know that this is a one-time device. While it does not remove the threat of spread of disease, it decreases the likelihood. This solution also would be relatively cheap and quick to implement, meaning it would not affect the rollout of the product.

Step 7: (If applicable) What are the implications of your solution on the venture. Explain the  impact of your proposed solution on the venture’s technology, economic, social and environmental  aspects. 

-Would allow for syringe to be distributed faster

-Still poses a risk for spread of disease 

 

I am officially done with the 2023 Mountaintop Summer Experience! These past 10 weeks have taught me so much about our project and environmental justice, and I’m so proud of all the work our team has accomplished. 

One of our main projects this summer was to add a pathway at the park to increase its accessibility and visual appeal. We were able to finish the section around the herb spiral on Tuesday, which included digging up sod and around two inches of dirt, laying down cardboard, and adding wood chips. We will still need to source large amounts of wood chips to finish the pathway down to the sidewalk, but the amount that we have finished now still improves the visual appeal of the park by a great amount. 

We were able to better secure the luffa trellis in the bed. We ended up having to use duct tape to secure it, but now the plants have started to respond to the trellis and are doing well! Wednesday afternoon we added fall flowers to planters near the parking lot, and fall greens in two petal beds. We planted these crops at the right time so we are hoping to see them flourish next semester! 

Because we will not be working on the park for around two weeks, and students will be moving in soon, it was imperative that we cleaned up the park to ensure that nothing was an obstruction to the campus community. This included putting away and organizing several items such as planters, moving cold frames to behind the house, weeding around the path and the petal beds, and moving the giant log to near the hugelkultur. 

At the beginning of the week, we were surprised to see a few of the petal beds had been merged.  We learned that a student had gone ahead to merge the beds and plant tomatoes, chili peppers, and spinach.  We reached out to the student and clarified our plans for the park and the petal bed redesign.  This was a good lesson for us: we need to improve communication and implement protocols at the park so others are aware of our plans at the park and we know what others do/plant at the park. We also donated some produce to Plant A Row.

We continued to revise the website to make it more professional and reduce excess content that made our site difficult to digest. We have made significant growth over the past few weeks fixing the website, with only little left to do. 

Our team met with e-board members of Lehigh’s Community Growers, including their president Ella Rossetti to plan for the Bethlehem Farmers’ Market. SSPP and Community Growers will be tabling together this fall at the market.  Our primary goal is education of permaculture and promoting both student groups.  During the meeting our teams discussed posters, brochures, and even stickers to have at the table.  This was a good opportunity to get a head start on farmers’ market prep as well as reconnect with Community Growers after the summer apart.  

I also gave another presentation about the park and community health to an entrepreneurship camp run by the nonprofit Future For Her. This was such a great opportunity to teach young girls about permaculture and how they can get involved in projects like ours. They had so many questions about why community health is so important and how to have a successful project and it was great to talk to them. 

Overall, this was a great last week. I am excited to jump back into the project in about two weeks in the fall semester!

It’s hard to believe that there is only one week left at Mountaintop. We accomplished a lot this week and I am excited to finish out the last week strong. 

This week at the park my main focus with maintenance was the luffas. The luffa plants are growing well, but a lot of weeds grew last week that needed to be removed. I removed the weeds and added compost, as well as comfrey leaves as mulch to support the growth of the luffas and stop weeds from growing. Because the luffas are growing more, I also set up the trellis again; I did not follow a specific shape, but it does have two peaks. I hope that the plants respond well to the trellis and will begin to climb it. 

I also helped to work on the pathway, mostly by filling up wheelbarrows with wood chips. Thursday morning, I also removed sod for a decent portion around the herb spiral, but I did not dig very deep. We also placed cardboard down that we found in the waste stream around Lehigh’s campus. We are about halfway done with the pathway, and we will most likely get it finished within the first few weeks of the fall semester. 

I also signed ourselves up for Chipdrop, a service that allows arbors to give away wood chips and logs to gardeners. I placed a request for wood chips, and while this does not guarantee that we will receive wood chips by a certain date, it does mean that if an opportunity arises where someone in the area needs to give wood chips away they will see our request.

We are continuing to update the website, and we made a lot of progress this week. Not only did we change the layout of some of the pages on the website, as well as adding a community partners tab to our main menu, but we skimmed through lots of old blog content and removed content that was either outdated or unfit for the website. We also continued to rewrite different posts under the “Processes and Techniques” tab, and we will edit these and upload them soon. It is a little frustrating to have to edit so much of the website, but it is important to our team that the content accurately reflects the mission and values of the Southside Permaculture Park.

Thursday afternoon, we also presented at the Lehigh Summer Research Expo. We had some really great conversations with some of our current partners, and we also met some new people that were very invested in our project. We got to talk to Mark about working with him to set up an archway for the park in the fall, and we met a filmmaker who was interested in filming the park for a documentary through Connor. It was also nice to see the other posters and learn more about what other Lehigh students are researching. After the expo, we won an award for best poster design in the environmental category!

This week as a busy week. We worked on park maintenance as well as working more on the website and beginning event planning processes.

At the Park

1. Hugelkultur
   1. We pulled snakeroot (an invasive weed that was crowding out other plants) from the Hugelkultur and put the snakeroot in compost. With more space in the Hugelkultur, we were able to plant more pumpkin seeds, so the pumpkin will be ready to harvest before the first frost in the fall.
2. Tool shed
   1. Finishing the tool shed, it became increasingly difficult to hammer in the nails into solid wood.  We have decided to switch to screws and drill the remaining wood planks. Also to finish the shed, a facia (piece of wood) is needed to protect the exposed beams and prevent water/rain from blowing inside the shed. Isabelle’s uncle will be able to provide a single, solid wood piece long enough.
3. Annual Bed
   1. Three Sisters
      1. The Three Sisters garden finally is showing all three sisters! The corn is beginning to pop up after last week’s planting. However, it may be too late for it to yield any corn when harvesting season approaches.
   2. Tomatoes
      1. This week, we pruned the tomatoes and have seen a lot of new and growing fruit. We hope that in the next 2 weeks we will be harvest-ready!
   3. Tomatillos
      1. Scattered throughout the annual bed, we have noticed a lot of growth of (we think) tomatillo plants. Back in June, we planted the tiny seedlings thinking that not much would happen, but we have seen tremendous growth. The other possibility is that these plants are all ground cherry plants, which are known to be an edible weed. Due to both looking so similar and planting the tomatillo seedlings that were in the greenhouse, we will be waiting it out.
4. General maintenance and planning
   1. Weeding
      1. Throughout the week, we have been consistent with weeding all throughout the park. Emma also began to weed out the troughs that are along the concrete ledge of the park which we intend to fill with plants soon.
   2. Laying Compost Down
      1. With so much new rich compost, we decided to immediately put it to use. We added compost in the orchard, annual bed, and hugelkultur to help enhance plant growth.
5. Pathway
   1. This week, we began making headway on the pathway. We will be starting it by building the path around the herb spiral. After that is complete, we will carve our full path down to the sidewalk. To prevent weeds from popping up, we are using cardboard and layering it with fresh mulch. This is an all natural and permaculture-friendly design to enhance the park. Next week, we will continue to work on the path and hopefully be nearly done with it before the MTSE program ends.
6. Meeting with Master Gardener
   1. Meeting with Jennifer Mack from the Penn State Extension’s Master Garnder Program was productive, and it was refreshing to see the park through someone else’s eyes and to talk to someone who sees the potential for the SSPP to become a productive greenspace.  After talking with Jen, we decided to focus on cleaning the existing space rather than adding to or completely redesigning park.  Along these lines, we are working on putting in a pathway up to the herb spiral, and in the fall, we will work to reshape and merge the petal beds, turning them into flower beds.  Our priority, overall, will be to clean up the space because we have a lot of plants to work with and just need to feature them more prominently.  We are looking forward to working with Jen, especially in the fall, and connecting with any volunteers she may have contacts to that are interested in helping out at the park.

9. Virtual work
   1. Website
      1. Emma had a conference call with a web analyst, Dave, from Ohana Digital to help navigate the website. There have been numerous issues with the site and continues to be. Both Emma and Dave will continue to update the website and look into the long list of issues that are in dire need of being resolved.
   2. Ice House Event
      1. Julie met with Doug from the Ice House and connected with different people from the Ice House regarding their Rock N Grow event on August 27th. This was a great opportunity to meet other people in the Lehigh Valley that are not just interested in environmental health and community greenspaces, but also music and art!

 

These last two weeks, I hope to get a lot done at the permaculture park and prepare for the following semester.

This was a challenging but eventful week at the permaculture park. Most notably, we were finally able to clear large trash materials that have accumulated over the years on-site. This includes plaster-filled buckets, shards of glass, broken cold frames, tires, paint covered wood, broken hoses, etc. We also moved all of the lumber laying behind the compost bins away from the house to get rid of any risk of termites. Our park is now much cleaner and safer and we are excited to transform these once trash-filled spaces into a flourishing part of our landscape. 

The wood we accumulated all throughout the park we sorted into two piles, one for a new hugelkultur mound and one for free pickup. So far, there have been a few Etsy sellers interested in taking our wood for their creations. I reached out to Mark and Kim, but unfortunately neither of them were interested, though they agreed to spread the word. We will continue to upload digital content of our wood to Facebook Marketplace and local Bethlehem Facebook groups in hopes that people will take our wood waste! On Wednesday, Professor Wurth assisted us in turning the compost bins over. We filled several buckets worth of fresh and ready-to-use compost and everything else we will be either sifting or turning further to allow the materials to decompose longer. 

We spent a lot of time at the park this week doing general maintenance on top of the significant clean ups that had occurred. We began to weed the invasive snakeroot out of the hugelkultur mound, as well as several locations throughout the park. This takes a while because the root can travel fairly far into the ground, making it sometimes difficult to pull. By removing the snakeroot, we will create space to plant fall crops such as pumpkins. We also began to weed neglected pots and buckets that were filled with rich soil. By doing so, we now have several resources for nutrient rich soil right within our park. 

As for community engagement, just as we did last week, we set up a table at the Bethlehem Farmers’ Market where we were able to hand out brochures as well as some crops we had harvested that morning. It was slow at first, but we saw some familiar faces and even talked to a few new people who expressed interest in coming to the park. We also saw Jen, one of the master gardeners from Penn State, and scheduled a time to meet with her next week. All produce we did not give away was donated to Plant A Row Lehigh Valley. I also followed up with Doug about meeting with him, and we plan to meet next week, 

We also attended Rodale’s Annual Organic Field Day. This was an all day event that showcased their research and work at the farm. We learned about composting, no-till management, soil health & water quality, farming & vegetable systems trials, etc. Governor Josh Shapiro also was there at their press conference. This was a super informational day and a great way to learn more about organic farming practices.

We have truly begun to make progress on the website. It has been an uphill battle still trying to figure out how to navigate WordPress and AIOSEO, but we have definitely made a bit of a dent in the site. We began to clean up different posts as well as our main content about permaculture philosophy. 

Although this has been a rather slow process, we are continuing to sift through readings on permaculture, policy, and case study examples to help prepare us for our future endeavors of writing our own. We are currently prioritizing a lot of our on-site tasks and website to build our credibility within the community as well as online. Overall, this week was both productive and challenging, and I am excited to see what we accomplish in these last three weeks.

This week we were able to accomplish a lot at the park. The main thing I did with park maintenance was transplanting our luffa plants. They are growing more successfully than we expected, which means that we would either have to thin them out or move them to another area in order to keep them from overcrowding. Now that the plants have grown “true leaves,” an indicator of genuine growth, we could indicate which plants were thriving, which at this point is all of them. In order to create a better environment for these plants to thrive, we weeded the other side of the bed the plants are in, and moved half of them over. Pea plants used to occupy this side, but now that they are out of season, we can use this space for luffas. 

I also took apart a rotting wood pallet by removing all the nails from it that we could with the back of a hammer. While we were able to fully take it apart, some of these nails are deeply embedded in the wood and most likely cannot be removed unless the surrounding wood further rots. We may place the rotting wood in the hugelkultur in order to re-integrate it into our system. 

On the theme of park accessibility and function, I also moved a honey locust tree from inside the annual bed to the heart garden. Honey locust trees have very sharp thorns, but they are nitrogen-fixing plants, meaning that they help repair soil. One of these trees was left in a pot in the annual bed, but we transplanted it to the heart garden. The heart garden does not have anything growing in it and is in a somewhat inconspicuous location, so moving this tree to the heart garden means that we can still use it to create healthy soil, but people do not have to come into contact with its sharp thorns. Given that we are focusing a lot on park accessibility and function, moving this tree to the heart garden was a decision that improves accessibility while maintaining ecosystem health. 

We are continuing literature review as per usual. However, this week, we also went down to the Community Action Development Bethlehem office to make copies of different sources they have on the history of community gardens in Southside Bethlehem. These sources included garden ordinances and agreements, and we will use them in our literature review to inform our research paper and the park’s ability to benefit the Southside Bethlehem community.

I also spoke to a few different people about room for collaboration between the SSPP and local organizations in the Lehigh Valley music and art community. A past permaculture fellow informed us of an event at the Ice House that the Sierra Club is sponsoring that combines live music with native plant education. Doug, who works at the Ice House, also contacted me about potentially doing an event between the SSPP and Lehigh Valley Girls Rock, an organization I have worked with in the past multiple times outside of this project. I plan to meet with Doug next week to discuss both of these opportunities and what exactly he has in mind. 

I am currently out of town, so on Friday I attended two press conferences via Zoom and answered questions through the chat. I also used this time to continue literature review and work on editing different pages for the website. On Monday, I also met with Haidan to talk about my experiences with Creative Inquiry and the MTSE as a first-year. 

This week at Mountaintop we did lots of general maintenance and have continued to conduct literature for our case studies. We had a day off this week and I was also the only fellow in-person on Monday, so I do feel that this week was slightly less productive for me as I had less time and also struggled to motivate myself throughout the first day being the only one there. I was only able to dig up sod for about an hour before I decided it was too hot, but I was able to focus on literature review the entire afternoon.

More specifically on the literature review and the research outline, I have been reading about how most permaculture gardens do not fit a community garden model, and how there is a gap in research regarding the intersection between community gardens and permaculture design. Most resources I’ve been reading about permaculture are for personal or professional agricultural use as well, which means that this is something I want to explore regarding our case study and the permaculture park. I may also read more about community gardens as a whole, even though this would not be about permaculture specifically, to continue to inform myself about community engagement. I also reached out to Anna Smith from Community Action Development Bethlehem to inquire about literature regarding the history of community gardens in Southside Bethlehem so that we can continue to inform our project and use our case study to give back to the community. 

As for park maintenance, the biggest project this week that will continue for most likely for a couple more weeks is redesigning the petal beds. This is something that we have been intermittently working on in the mornings. This week, we dug up all the rocks and have begun to dig up more sod. General maintenance this week included weeding the annual bed and removing a mulberry tree and grapevine that were growing on the fence and shading out the garden. We also caged plants in the annual bed. Next week I will have to decide how to proceed with the luffa plants I planted; they are actually doing much better than I suspected they would, and so we have a lot and they therefore must be thinned out. However, these are plants that I definitely want to circulate throughout the community as they have practical use, so I may need to do more weeding and find a different location to grow some of the luffas as their current location may be too small for all of them. Other plants that are doing successfully are winter squashes, raspberries, peas, carrots, and lavender. We also bought a hay pitchfork for turning compost.

We also worked on was park management, which was mainly contacting people about concerns over maintenance of the park. This included things like inquiring about different places to store materials in our tool shed that do not belong to us, and inquiring about trash at the park. Press conferences are also next week, so we made a list of key partners to reach out to and sent them invitation emails through the SSPP email address. We also updated our contact list with some of these partners to make sure that our records of contacts are updated. 

Lastly, Friday afternoon, we visited the Burnside Plantation in North Bethlehem. We did not speak to anyone, and we were not there very long as it was raining, but it was nice to look at a garden design that was also sloped, though not as sloped as the permaculture park. We took note of different aspects of the design we enjoyed, such as their structures with twine for climbing plants, or their trellis, as well as aspects of the design we believe could be improved. 

Overall, this week may have been a slower one, but we still accomplished a variety of tasks that are necessary for running and building up the permaculture park. I am excited to see how park maintenance and research continue throughout the second half of both the MTSE and our overarching Impact Fellowships, and I am confident that by the end of the fellowship there will be lots of progress to look back on. This marks the halfway point, and while I am proud of all that we have accomplished and how we continuously strengthen our understandings of what it means to engage the community and what our project is meant to accomplish, it is a little intimidating to think that we are halfway through. We now have more tools and more knowledge to make lots of progress though, so I do believe that we will keep building on our progress and continue to strengthen the project.

This week at Mountaintop was particularly productive in terms of reevaluating our goals for the Permaculture Park and planning for community engagement.

In terms of community engagement, what was notable to me this week was our meeting with The Seed Farm. On Wednesday afternoon, we took a trip to The Seed Farm in Emmaus, accompanied by another interested student who occasionally works at the park. The Seed Farm is an incubator farm that gives beginner farmers an opportunity to test out a business model for a farm through leasing land and having access to all types of farm equipment. The Seed Farm helps farmers establish themselves so that they can then transition to having their own farm. Our visit to the seed farm was helpful in a variety of ways, mainly because Katy, the person we met with, was able to give us a variety of contacts and resources for other places we could visit to learn more about urban agriculture and farming. Katy also encouraged us to think about what the main goals of the Permaculture Park were, and how we could engage the Southside Bethlehem community. She suggested planting mainly fruit and flowers, as they provide aesthetic appeal and are things that people can pick themselves, meaning they will spend time in the park.

After meeting with The Seed Farm, who encouraged us to define the main goal of the permaculture park and what to focus on, we re-defined some of our goals and used the surrounding whiteboards in our cubicle to outline what was most important to us. We determined that park accessibility, park yields, and our case study were most important to us. We further broke this down by detailing our park action items and maintenance plan, our plans for community engagement and our partners, and our plans for what topics we want to cover in our case study. This will help inform our decisions regarding what to prioritize and how to use our space in the future.

However, this week, we did also run into a potentially major issue in terms of thinking about the longevity of our project. We received a disheartening email from Risk Management while inquiring about community engagement at the park. This email included a discouraging “side note” that our park may “be developed for other use” in the future. This was the first that we have heard of this, which came as a shock to our team. We immediately emailed our advisors about this, and we are waiting to hear back about how we should proceed. We firmly believe that this land is important to Lehigh University and the Southside Bethlehem community and that the university should respect student projects. This made us question how much we should be investing into the physical land of the park now that we have heard it may be taken away from us, and while we have a variety of other things we can work on beyond our land such as educational programming and consulting, we are willing to fight to protect the land we do have and the benefits it can bring to our community.

As for park maintenance, we also continued our work modifying the petal beds, and did general routine maintenance, which included transplanting mint in our herb spiral and adding more corn and squash to our annual bed. While this was productive and will increase the yields of our park, it becomes difficult to think about the impact of these procedures with the information we’ve heard from risk management and the uncertainty of our land.

Other forms of community engagement this week include preparing materials for the Bethlehem Farmers’ Market and attending our first Southside Task Force meeting. There weren’t many people at the Southside Task Force meeting because of the upcoming holiday, but it was interesting to attend another meeting focused on the Southside Bethlehem community. There was a very insightful discussion as well between Professor Kate Jackson and Officer Rodriguez regarding trash and how people have called the police over trash which was interesting to hear.

Overall, this was a productive week for the permaculture park, but a week that reminded us of the local political landscapes we conduct our work in. We accomplished a lot, but there is a lot of work to complete ahead, especially in terms of maintaining the longevity of our park.

Week 3 at Mountaintop was very productive and I am excited to see where the project evolves from here. The main components of what we accomplished this week were physical park maintenance, community engagement, and beginning to plan a research paper.

Starting with physical park elements, we planted our lavender hedge which helps with park aesthetics and deer repellent. We also planted marigolds as a secondary plant, as these also repel deer and provide aesthetic value. Additionally, we also planted luffas and harvested different plants such as cherries, peas, and herbs. There were also several minor tasks, such as removing an old tree, adding a few more plants to the annual bed, weeding the three sisters garden, and building sod terraces so that plants on a slope can get an optimal water supply.

We also began to restructure the petal beds, which is part of our larger park redesign. The current issue with the petal beds is that they do not have a lot of surface area and the rocks around the perimeter are above ground and an unsafe tripping hazard. We are merging them together, setting the rocks deeper in the ground, and we will also be using the petal beds as a wildflower garden. We have concerns about the safety of the soil for yielding food, and we have enough other above-ground areas in the garden that we can use for yielding food that we can afford to use the petal beds as an aesthetic space. This will also transform the aesthetic value of the park and we are excited to see the results. 

As for community engagement, what stood out to me the most this week was the Southside’s Tomorrow Public and Greenspace Committee Meeting followed by the presentation I gave for Future For Her.  While I have been attending these meetings since February as a way to learn about other projects similar to ours in Southside Bethlehem, today’s meeting was exceptionally productive in that there were great conversations about the progress with trash in Southside Bethlehem and the current development of community gardening policies. 

The presentation for Future for Her was also a great way for me to practice presenting and also educate a younger generation about permaculture and community health at an age-appropriate level. Because community health is such a developing field and permaculture is not very well-known, it was wonderful to be able to introduce passionate young girls in elementary and middle school to these topics. They had lots of questions about the park and community health, and it was a great exercise in explaining these topics in an easy-to-comprehend way. 

We also met with Dr. Jackson to discuss our interest in writing a research paper, and she helped us with the idea of doing a case study about how we have had to shift our project’s missions and plans several times as we continue to better understand the issues Southside Bethlehem residents face and how we can use the space we have to help alleviate these issues. We are also planning on using this paper to discuss certain aspects of permaculture design philosophy, and potentially how it connects to Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach. I myself am also very interested in the permaculture principle “Integrate Rather Than Segregate,” which emphasizes the need for multiple connections and purposes. I am interested in how this principle applies to both ecological networks and social networks, and I want to work this into the paper  somehow when discussing permaculture design philosophy. 

The greenspace meeting additionally helped us find direction in the case study we are planning on writing because we now also plan to conduct a literature review on the history of community gardens in Southside Bethlehem, after hearing that there is interest in uncovering this history. We are still figuring out the general direction of this paper, but we know that our connection with Community Action Development Bethlehem and their committee will help us use this paper towards making genuine progress with our project and helping Southside Bethlehem’s community gardening scene. While we are only just starting out with this paper, it was great to receive more insight as to how we could use it to benefit Southside Bethlehem. Our initial steps with this paper are to continue writing these blogs and reflecting on our park’s progress, as well as conducting literature reviews in both permaculture and the history of community gardens in Southside Bethlehem. 

This week, we worked on all sorts of different tasks, but we made a lot of progress. Sometimes I find that it is difficult to find a specific area to focus on, because we are working on several different components at once, but when I find the best task to concentrate on that day, I am able to accomplish a lot. I am excited to explore what we worked on this week much deeper and continue to make progress.

Week 2 of MTSE was a very successful week for the permaculture park, and I am excited for what’s to come. While much of the park maintenance we did this week was challenging and doesn’t always yield immediate results, it was nonetheless important in terms of making the park a more accessible and welcoming space, even if we are not at a place yet where the park gets much engagement. 

This week our focus was on preparing for park maintenance, which included creating a plan for changing the layout of several components of the park. We are envisioning that these changes will make the park a more welcoming, accessible space, as well as more high-yielding. These changes include turning our hugelkultur bed into a community bed, creating a new hugelkultur bed, growing flowers instead of food in the petal beds, and moving the park benches. We also spent lots of time in the park weeding, but now that Brightview has come to mow the lawn, the park has greater aesthetic appeal. We have definitely seen a major improvement in the visual aspects of the park now that we have planted more in the annual bed, watered our crops consistently, and experienced a lot of rain ending the drought. 

We also got back into the groove of doing community engagement work, although there is much more to be done. We met with those working on the Lenape garden currently located on the Greenway, and in the coming weeks we will be helping to move the garden to Cafe the Lodge. We also attended the Lehigh Greenspace and Health working group meeting, where we gained valuable insight in regards to the current state of many community gardens in South Bethlehem, and we are planning on coordinating a meeting with the Department of Health to talk about community garden policies. I also made a presentation for a nonprofit based in Greater Philadelphia, Future For Her, to educate underprivileged middle school girls about community health and permaculture as I was asked to be a guest speaker for one of their summer camps this summer. I will be giving this presentation next Tuesday and I am excited to teach the next generation about the basics of community health and permaculture, using our project as an example!

Overall, I am proud of what we accomplished this week, and I am excited to be taking up a larger project with the park remodeling, as I think this will be a change substantial enough to bring energy and recognition to the park. My goal for this is that it helps ease community engagement work by building the park’s credibility and having more to offer in terms of building long-lasting relationships.