DRIPPY is an EWB project focused on helping develop a community garden on Champion avenue. Two of our main partners are Lutheran Social Services(LSS) and South Side Family Farms(SSFF). The community garden is being planned around an LSS food pantry. LSS wants the community garden to be a community space, as well as a space for education on gardening, the benefits of fresh food, and many more topics. EWB’s main tasks for this project are designing a rainwater collection system to help sustain the garden, as well as designing a green roof for the top of the food pantry.
Teams
Green Roof: The green roof section of DRIPPY is currently designing a rudimentary floor plan for the LSS pantry roof that will be focused on housing local flora for the purposes of ecosystem diversity. Future plans are currently being discussed as well for after that project ends. These future plans include making the roof accessible to visitors, growing more than just local plants, but also plants that community members can grow themselves, and plants used for beautification purposes. A small walkway would also be installed, as well as small plaques to educate community members on what the plants in the space are and various facts about them. The space will be used as a greenhouse/zen walk area/lookout hybrid that will give community members a safe space to relax amongst a small snippet of nature.
Rainwater Collection: The Rainwater collection portion of Drippy is focused on building cisterns to help collect rainwater to be used in the garden. One of our main tasks is figuring out how we are going to route the rainwater from the roofs into the cisterns. We are also planning on connecting the cisterns to irrigation systems that can be spread out across the plot and up to the green roof.
Engineers Without Borders-USA 