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With support from a group of Healthy School Lunch advocacy organizations, Senator Carol Fukunaga launched a Sustainability Zone during this year's Children & Youth Day (CYD), held on October 2^nd at the State Capitol grounds. The Sustainability Zone offered a variety of activities aimed at inspiring and educating young people at all levels about sustainable practices they can incorporate into their daily lives – from caring for the land, to eating healthy fruits and vegetables, to growing their own gardens of herbs, vegetables and flowers, to growing lettuce hydroponically.

CYD volunteers assisted H-5 (Hawaii Helping the Hungry Have Hope) and the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources to distribute “Lettuce Kits”, which included a hydroponic lettuce gardening brochure, complete with a small packet of Manoa lettuce seeds and simple instructions for setting up and growing lettuce “in a bucket”. Gallon bottles and 5-gallon buckets with lettuces growing hydroponically (basically, in water, without soil) and a demonstration by Charles Struwe of H-5’s Next Step shelter, showed the simple efficiency of hydroponic gardening .

The remaining Lettuce Kits were distributed to urban Honolulu and other schools and pre-schools, to help jump start the establishment of school garden projects in conjunction with the School Garden/Farm to School program this fall.

Children also had the chance to get their hands “dirty” by digging to discover critters living in healthy, fertile soil brought by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation/AINA in the Schools and to observe the beautiful truck garden of thriving vegetables, herbs and flowers brought by the Windward Nazarene Academy. Many had their pictures taken with large cut-outs of colorful vegetables and fruits grown in Hawaii and spun for prizes while learning about sustainability.