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Our Mission

StartUpRoots empowers students to develop their potential and challenges them to build a more equitable and sustainable future by providing a platform for growing food, ideas, and responsibility for the earth’s limited resources.

Our Story

Founded in 2015, StartUpRoots’ first priority was to address the needs of hungry school children in one of Jerusalem’s poorest neighborhoods. While private funds were raised to provide what might be the students’ only meal of the day, the white rice, canned peas, and rolls with chocolate spread weren’t what the students needed. They not only needed more nutritious food, but the schools to enable them to provide for a better future. When the principle told us that graduates returned to their teachers for help with wedding expenses, we knew that we needed to transform handouts to hands-on education. We converted a dilapidated school yard into a 100 sq meter hydroponic farm. Growing 1500 vegetables a month, students learned the importance of nutrients for both the plants and themselves.

Word spread and soon other principles and teachers wanted to “green” their schools. As few schools have the space for a 100 sq meter greenhouse, we needed to develop a farm that could literally fit anywhere. In the hallway of a school that serves just over 100 students, StartUpRoots designed a vertical system that could grow 120 plants per meter, per month. Students became active learners, researching plant needs, applying the scientific method to growing sprouts, microgreens, leafy greens and herbs, documenting plant growth and reflecting on their own growth, through curriculum in photojournalism and enjoying the fruits of their labors as they learned to develop new products, such as the hydro-shake, a healthy drink they advertised to other students in the school, as part of our entrepreneurship curriculum.

We’ve developed our farm to a commercial level, enabling Yeshiva students in a 22 sq meter 2000-year-old room in the Old City, to devote just a few hours a week to produce hundreds of vegetables for sale to local residents. The vegetables are harvested to order and reach our customers within minutes of being harvested. Hydroponics uses 90% less water than traditional farming, eliminates the need for chemical pesticides, reduces waste, and saves precious land. Food grown locally, in a controlled environment reduces the carbon footprint and makes fresh vegetables available all year long. Yeshiva students use the farm for learning and teaching related subjects including Jewish tradition and social justice, health, environmentalism, and more.

We provide students with the tools to develop skills, knowledge, and a love of learning that will engage them to be responsible team players in a world that demands cooperation, consideration, and collaboration. Within our multidisciplinary curriculum, we invite students to find what they enjoy, develop what they are good at, appreciate the input of others, and focus on what our world needs. There is no greater pleasure than to watch students grow by growing!