It's the final full week of summer before school starts in New York City, and many teens are busy trying to make the most of their downtime by going to the beach, hanging with friends, and finally beating the video game that's been vexing them the past three months.
Not Steven Hoffen. On this week's particularly steamy Monday, the 16-year-old Upper West Sider is hard at work on the third floor of the Queensboro Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison in Queens. There, Hoffen — who took the SAT the previous day — is building an indoor hydroponic system that will one day produce leafy greens like lettuce and cilantro to feed the jail's inmates.
Hoffen, a junior at Riverdale Country School who previously attended the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, is the founder of Growing Peace, a not-for-profit that uses hydroponics — a technique for growing plants using nutrient-enhanced water instead of soil — as a "medium to educate, empower and help those in need," according to its website.
Since establishing his first hydroponic farm at a food pantry in Tel Aviv in late 2021 — using approximately $15,000 he received for his bar mitzvah earlier that year — Hoffen has installed five such systems across New York City, including at YM&YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood, the Bronx's Mosholu Montefiore Community Center and the Edgecombe Residential Treatment Facility in Harlem.
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