Environmental Science

Approximately sixty percent of the world's refugee population lives in urban cities and towns across the globe, a number expected to grow under increased climate change. In the United States, many refugees receive welfare support and participate in resettlement programs to rebuild their lives in America. Nevertheless, they also often find themselves embroiled in the systemic inequality that defines urban areas through legacies of racial segregation and structural xenophobia.

Seeds for Her is a project that is part of North Face's Move Mountains Grant Program in partnership with Greening Youth Foundation. This project aims to promote food security and sustainable practices of urban agriculture through environmental education workshops. Moreover, we want to empower young girls through education and we had a book club where we discussed and learned about environmental justice, activism and ecofeminism. One of our objectives is to promote environmental activism as a lifestyle.

There are recent concerns with how honeybees are impacted by neonicotinoids, a class of neuro-active insecticides that are chemically similar to nicotine. However, it remains largely unknown how and to what extent neonicotinoids impact wild bee species, especially in the United States. Wild bees play a major role in pollination, so it is vital to develop more research on possible effects of neonicotinoids on wild bees. This study aimed to determine the geographic areas in the United States where neonicotinoids have the potential to cause a decline in wild bee populations.