en

Lajanda Blake (’25, Jamaica) can turn words into poetry and has strong hands to plant and grow much of the food she and her family eat in their Jamaican village. Lajanda chose to study at EARTH to learn about the world of agriculture, community development, and sustainability.

At the age of nine, Adam Vorster (‘25, South Africa) became aware of the importance of agriculture for humanity’s food security. Back then, his family was not going through a stable economic situation. As a result, with his parents and sister, they began growing food for self-consumption. Adam had the ultimate epiphany from then on: agronomy would always be an essential part of his life.

Heilyn Calvo Vargas (Class of 2022, Costa Rica) decided she wanted to dedicate herself to science at a young age. Now, only 22 years old, she has achieved impressive results through extensive research that has positively impacted her community, Costa Rica, and EARTH. Her dreams are big, and her desire to fulfill them is even greater. To celebrate Women and Girls in Science Month, we share her story.

In partnership with the CRUSA Foundation, EARTH Futures worked together with different stakeholders from Hojancha, Nicoya, and Santa Cruz counties in Costa Rica to strengthen the management strategies of the Potrero Caimital Biological Corridor, a vital space for the conservation of regional biodiversity and water resources.

Yohannes Bimrew Simegn (Class of 2025, Ethiopia), a Mastercard Foundation scholarship recipient, is many things at once: an inventor, a dreamer, and a determined and curious person constantly seeking to innovate and improve the world. He grew up in Gojam, a rural community in Ethiopia with minimal modern technology, where agriculture is the primary source of income…

A 2007 donation from USAID’s American Hospitals and Schools Abroad (ASHA) program created EARTH’s dairy plant. It is a place that encourages experiential learning and produces the best quality dairy products for the university’s internal consumption.

As executive director of EARTH Futures, Emily Fintel Kaiser works each and every day studying and upscaling solutions that improve agricultural sustainability and life quality in rural areas. In this eye-opening interview, she explains how EARTH Futures is magnifying the University’s impact.

Our Class of 2021 recently returned from 15-week professional internships around the world. Fourth-year students Zakeyu Tawonga (Malawi), Ana Marian González (Nicaragua), and Usman Mohammed (Nigeria) feel inspired to get to work in their home countries after transformative experiences in Malawi, Brazil, and the USA.

Since 2007, the United Nations declared that every October 15 is a day to remember the essential role of rural women. The day honors women who farm, take care of their homes, and fight for their communities’ food security. Besides all this, they face daily challenges where they must do everything possible to achieve inclusion, eradicate poverty, and empower and educate themselves in a world that has often closed doors to them…