Field log
我们建造、交付和学到的一切，持续记录。
2026年8月
A morning session at 135 West 23rd Street with KidsKnowRights, hosted by VISIONS' program and community engagement team, for blind and visually impaired New Yorkers. We committed about 60 boxes; the pot shipment arrived broken, so 10 went out on the day and the rest are being scheduled. Mint is a plant you can grow by touch and smell — this partnership is shaping every guide we print.
2026年6月
Somewhere this spring, the total number of MintBoxes donated since 2020 passed two thousand. It took three years to donate the first two hundred and about two more to donate the next eighteen hundred. The year-by-year records are being reconciled for the impact page.
2026年5月
Requests came through a parent form and delivery ran to homerooms rather than entrance pickup. Demand outran supply — more than 40 additional families asked after the first giveaway, so the form closed when materials ran out. Every family already on the list still received a box.
2026年4月
Three short classroom sessions — three to five minutes each, coordinated with a teacher — built to get students interested rather than to distribute. MintBox was worked into the curriculum across all three grades.
2026年3月
Every kit now carries a printed guide in English and Spanish — five illustrated steps covering location, filling the pot, planting, watering, and growth — with a QR code linking to more. A guide a family cannot read is decoration; this changed who the box works for.
2026年2月
Alongside KidsKnowRights and the Language Service Club: the church hosted and made the introductions, the wider effort collected toys and clothing, and we handed out garden boxes and taught planting. The partnership model working exactly as designed — and left open for more.
2025年11月
Distribution paired with a hands-on workshop rather than a drop-off: families plant their box before they take it home. About 400 boxes have gone out through this partnership to date, and it is ongoing.
2025年9月
We began distributing kits to families attending NSC's weekly pro bono immigration legal clinics, alongside the childcare program a MintBox member founded and runs there. The boxes travel through a relationship that already exists — which is the whole model.
2023年8月
We delivered the 50 EDU kits across four Covenant House shelters in Manhattan and the Bronx.
2023年8月
The whole team packed 50 Baby Sprout EDU kits in one afternoon — the fourth iteration of the design — ready for delivery to Covenant House.
2023年8月
A few weeks after planting, the radishes were up and close to harvest, on a bed nobody had to water daily.
2023年7月
We met with members to see how the planter was holding up, replanted radishes, and talked about the sub-irrigation systems we planned to build for other community centers.
2023年7月
Filling the sub-irrigation system with water through the corner access pipe, then planting it out for the first time.
2023年6月
We delivered the planter to the Hudson Guild Fulton Senior Center and set it up in the common room with the residents who had been prototyping it with us.
2023年6月
We bought the birch and built the frame in the school maker workshop, weather-proofing every face before the sub-irrigation pipes went in.
2023年5月
We modeled the frame, the sub-irrigation system and the access and drainage pipes before cutting any wood.
2021年11月
Ethan and Zenchang introduced the curriculum to two 5th grade science classes, about 30 students, from lesson plans built with the Lower Division teachers. The model was student to student: Upper Division students designed and led the lessons rather than adults teaching into the classroom.
2021年7月
We manufactured 75 more boxes with the ceramic 2.0 pot and spent the summer at Union Square — early fundraising, and the best lesson we ever got in explaining the box in thirty seconds.
2021年6月
We developed the first MintBox pot in CAD through the Avenues Mastery program and cut a run of 25 by hand on a laser cutter. Every one found a home within days.
2021年5月
We brought a kit into a first grade class at Avenues to find out whether the material held a class's attention. It did, and that session became the basis for the EDU curriculum.
