Yesterday the doejo video team and art director visited a new kind of school on the southwest side of Chicago called The Academy for Global Citizenship. While we weren’t chasing after chickens, eating 3 organic meals a day or doing yoga, we were filming video footage for their upcoming fundraising campaign.

If there was anything that we learned from our 10 hour shoot, it was that AGC’s mission is to create a new future for education and for the world. Not only are they able to empower their students to see the world differently and respect the planet we live on but also have fun while doing it. Having solar panels in their urban garden and teaching kids about food sustainability may seem like fluff, but the proof is in the pudding. Statistics have shown that their test scores and productivity levels have well surpassed many local neighborhood schools. Richard Daley and Michelle Obama have applauded founder, Sarah Elizabeth Ippel’s brave mission to change the world and ignite an education passion to make this planet a better place. The energy and life at AGC is contagious.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKs3oyChgNQ]

And all of this is happening in one of the most underserved areas of Chicago where there are more barbed wire and concrete than actual grass. Ippel’s vision was to offer her educational revolution in a ethnically diverse community that needed it. 

Now its time for the school to expand and spread their mission to larger pastures with the purchase of new land to build a completely net-positive and sustainable school that will be their new ground-breaking home. This isn’t a concrete building with wall to hold their kids but a living, breathing ecosystem that will encompass the schools mission and energy. Not only will portions of the school be built into the ground but they will also reuse and collect every drop of water that hits the site in order to reuse. Kids will look at apple orchards and organic gardens instead of gravel and curbs. With the help of Team Doejo, we hope to produce and create a fundraising video that successfully reflects the magic of this place and together, change the world.

To learn more about their new school ecosystem and how you can change the world visit: www.agcchicago.org/netpositive (designed by doejo)