Amid the urban streets of Bogota, Colombia, Rosa Poveda has built a farm and a school that works to restore pride in Colombian farming.
Poveda, this week’s America’s now Game Changer, was initially forced out of her home in northern Colombia due to the armed conflict that’s affected the country for five decades.
In Bogota, she took a tract of land once used as a dumping ground and transformed it into an organic garden. In exchange for farming work, her students are offered room and board and instruction on land conservation and sustainable urban farming, which includes landscape beautification and recycling and waste collection.
Since her farm is not officially funded, she relies on a mutually-beneficial barter system to gather supplies.
Povenda has traveled to Europe to share her experiences. While there, she traded seeds in an effort to diversify the Colombian diet outside of the five or six core ingredients.