Ritz is a South Bronx teacher & administrator who believes that inner city students shouldn’t have to leave their urban communities to learn about life or live a full one … and one of the most effective methods he uses to bring these Truths across is community gardening.

Ritz’s extended family of students and community volunteers have grown over 30,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance at the same time. His Bronx classroom features an indoor edible wall which routinely generates enough produce to feed 450 students healthy meals, while simultaneously training a young, talented, nationally certified workforce. Ritz’s efforts have raised average daily attendance levels in his school from 40% to 93% daily, helped create and fund youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, helped earn his school the first ever Citywide Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health. Stephen attributes these results directly to his students growing vegetables in school.

His speech at Columbia University, “From Crack to Cucumbers” resulted in a national following. Recently dubbed the Pied Piper of Peas by Lorna Sass, Ritz has just launched Green Bronx Machine to a national audience and has signed on over 5,000 local followers in several months. Ritz was also recently announced as a national Green Apple Education Ambassador for the US Green Building Council, and is working diligently on embedding the concepts of sustainability and environmental justice into American K-12 programming and beyond.

“Black field, brown field, toxic waste field, battlefield — we’re proving in the Bronx that you can grow anywhere.” ~ Stephen Ritz