By: Meghan Groome, PhD
On a breezy but beautiful Saturday, my kids woke me up brimming with excitement for our day’s adventure—a Far Rockaway beach cleanup to celebrate and honor Earth Day. For them, the day brought together their favorite things: caring for the earth and being at the beach.
Alongside dozens of our Queens partners, Teens for Food Justice joined as a community partner for State Senator James Sanders Jr.’s annual Rockaway event. Kicking off Earth Day weekend, we were excited to build community, clean up the only surf beach in NYC, and feel like we were doing our part to care for Mother Earth.
TFFJ is grounded in the belief that caring for our communities and caring for our planet go hand in hand. Climate change and food insecurity are deeply connected—compounding crises for environmental justice communities, especially those along the coastline. Rising temperatures, extreme weather, and shifting growing conditions threaten food production and supply chains, making fresh, nutritious food even harder to access.
As the food system becomes more fragile, hyper-local, highly efficient hydroponic farms become even more important. In this way, TFFJ advances food justice and climate action together through community resilience, sustainable and scalable agriculture, and youth empowerment. As a youth-led organization, we’re not only building food security today—we’re supporting the next generation of food justice leaders.
What made this year especially meaningful was the spirit of intergenerational learning and collective impact. Participants ranged from toddlers to members of a local senior center, alongside a dedicated Girl Scout troop, high school students earning community service hours, families, and young leaders who have gone on to found and lead their own environmental organizations.
I have such fond memories of Earth Day festivals in my hometown, so I was incredibly excited to share this day of action with my own kids.
