What type of organization best describes you? New Pond Farm Education Center (NPFEC) is a non-profit with the following mission: We inspire and educate each generation to become stewards of the land by championing conservation and sustainable farming practices to protect and preserve our natural world.
Describe your organization. NPFEC is a productive, working farm in Connecticut that importantly also provides an outstanding array of outdoor classrooms which include woodlands, wetlands (including the eponymous pond), an evolving scrub and shrub area, a pollinator meadow, rolling pastures, and a farm. The Science program facilitates student and community learning in Agriculture, Astronomy, Weather, Ornithology, Geology, Botany, Water and Air Quality, which it delivers through school field trips, adult lectures, family programs, children’s classes, and a summer camp. It is a comprehensive environmental teaching facility with a model working farm, offering many school programs and classes for children, teens, adults, and families.
Describe your project. Monitoring air quality can be a more critical component of environmental learning and Science programming at NPFEC, and for more fully delivering on our mission statement. We desire to modernize how we gather, analyze and act upon the data generated at the farm and supporting satellite locations, and air quality is a key contributor in this effort. Connecticut as a state has among the poorest air quality in the USA, and we are motivated at NPFEC to empower ourselves and our learners to monitor particle pollution in order to enhance environmental understanding and ultimately advocate for better air quality.
Which PurpleAir model(s) are you interested in and how many would you want for your project? NPFEC has an ageing PurpleAir sensor at the farm that is failing. It was donated by a local patron and needs to be replaced. We would like to replace this sensor (with a PurpleAir Classic Plus sensor) and also would like to supplement it with a second one for deployment at one of the inner-city schools that we engage in outdoor learning experiences. This would enable NPFEC and learners to more effectively and directly learn about what drives poor air quality.