NOMINATION STORY:

My sister, Nivedita, and her fiancé, Anthony, are two people who dedicate themselves to public service and good will.  Nivedita was an enthusiastic Biology major who did her senior project on sustainable development in South America.  This project inspired her travel to Ecuador to volunteer at Fundacion Jatun Sacha in the Amazon and Guandera reserves where she worked with locals in reforestation and organic farming projects.  While in South America, she travelled to Cusco, Peru and volunteered at an orphanage inspiring her to make service to children a lifetime commitment.  In medical school, she chose Pediatrics as her area of specialization. In residency, she volunteered for a month with the Pediatric Aids Corp in Lesotho, Africa. She is currently a pediatrician at an urban nonprofit health center in Chicago extending healthcare to the uninsured and underinsured. She continues a commitment to volunteerism on international medical missions to Venezuela, Peru, and Bangladesh serving children with cleft lips and palate. Nivedita is not only a role model for her adolescent patients but also for her younger patients (some of which have even asked their parents for doctor kits so they can be “just like Dr. Mohanty!”) She also models altruism and compassion to a new generation of physicians through the medical students and residents she teaches. Her passion for and dedication to serving others both near and far continues to greatly inspire her friends, family, and colleagues.

Although her career path has led her to medicine, she remains conscientious of preserving the earth’s resources. She recycles unused medical supplies U.S. hospitals discard as surplus inventory and takes them to developing countries where having such supplies is a luxury.   She chooses to live 9 blocks from her workplace so that even in the bitter Chicago winter, she can walk to work to minimize her carbon footprint.  She is very proud that in the 2.5 years of owning her car, she has only put 3500 miles on it. She is an avid recycler and the designated gardener for her building and plants flowers and herbs every year.
 
Anthony has been a Chicago Police officer for over 14 years where serving and protecting comes with great risk and entails special skills and resilience. For 2 years, he worked for the United Nations international peacekeeping mission as a police officer in war torn Kosovo. Despite dealing with situations resulting from hate, greed, violence, and cruelty, he still exudes compassion, optimism, and kindness and spreads this spirit to friends and colleagues around him as well as citizens in need. In addition to his daily commitment to serving and protecting the people of the Chicago, Anthony extends this mission to animals in need.  When abandoned or abused dogs brought into the station are ill fated to be sent to Animal Control, he chooses to rescue them from this fate by bringing them home. He arranges vet visits and independently cares for them until he can personally find kind and caring homes for them.  His most recent rescues are an adorable chihuahua mix, Dexter, and a poodle mix, Daley. All of his rescues now have lovely owners and happiness has been multiplied as the puppies and their new owners are blissfully content.

Anthony and Nivedita feel genuinely fortunate for their opportunities to serve others. Their travels far and wide have given them a love and appreciation for all life forms and natural beauty throughout the world. This passion takes them to nature preserves, conservation focused zoos, and gardens as part of all their travels internationally and domestically. To illustrate this love for the living, growing, and beautiful, Anthony proposed to Nivedita outside of the Lincoln Park conservatory and zoo in Chicago. They have touched the lives of so many and enriched the world as individuals and now will do so as a couple.


1. Explore the parallel between your commitment to each other and to the Earth? How does green living play a part in your lives together? How would you describe your unique shade of green?

Our shade of green is one of simplicity, encouraging small, meaningful, steps, to a greater green. We are two, very different people coming from humble beginnings, whose happiness comes from life experiences, loving others, and respect for living beings, not from accrued possessions.  Our career choices and actions to preserve the planet echo this humility and simplicity. We will never profess living a radical, poetic, or restrictive lifestyle to be green. Instead, in our life together, we make small, but meaningful, daily sacrifices and commitments to be kinder to the Earth and its beings. Our daily joys in life make us feel immeasurably wealthy by having: each other, amazing family and friends, good health, and the luxury to be able to give back in various forms.

We are a Pediatrician and Police Officer; two people with very different backgrounds, both inspired to serve the public, locally and globally. Our past international service passions include forest conservation, UN peace keeping missions, and medical missions. All of these bestowed upon us more fulfillment than our investment. Here in Chicago, our daily jobs provide healthcare for underserved children and protection of innocent citizens. In addition, we have sheltered numerous abandoned animals until we found them loving homes. We decrease our carbon footprint by walking to work daily instead of driving. We are avid recyclers who pushed for a recycling pickup for our building; we salvage unused medical supplies headed for waste and donate them to needy countries.

In Chicago, patches of green can feel scarce. Amidst the ubiquitous crowds and concrete, we love creating our own patch of green. We enthusiastically blanket our patio every spring with seedlings and enjoy eating foods prepared from fresh herbs from our modest garden. The basic, but much loved act of eating is one our favorite vehicles for living greener. Our diet is fruit and vegetable rich; we frequent restaurants supporting local farms, we buy produce at local farmers’ markets, and aim to eat seasonal produce. We buy what we need, creatively cook the excess, and freeze what we can’t consume.

Like our garden, we sow growth and renewal in a thriving relationship.  The brightest qualities we possess are made exponentially more brilliant, simply by the other’s presence. We encourage sustainable practices promoting a healthy mind, body, and spirit through laughter, yoga, exercise, meaningful travels, and healthy eating.  In our two and a half years together, just as we have felt a responsibility to empower others, we extend ourselves completely as the other’s support system.  We have weathered lost loved ones, illnesses, and work pressures with compassion and kind, acts, both great and small, to lighten the other's burden. Despite hard times, we infuse each other with gratitude for: life, the health we have, and an optimistic spirit for better days undoubtedly lying ahead.
 
2. As a couple, how would you define your inspirational green message? Tell us your story. How might your story inspire others?

Our inspirational message is to simply travel and celebrate life in all forms.  Our message of travel is not limited to the conventional concept of getting on an airplane and going somewhere, but instead, simply movement in new and positive directions. For much of our lives, neither of us actually ever envisioned getting married. We each planned to dedicate our lives to international service, a life we viewed as incompatible with settling down. Since meeting, we have each travelled a long, sometimes rocky path to finally commit to an exciting shared journey through life. After a year into our relationship, we were both presented with offers abroad for volunteer -work and felt it would mean the end of our time together. Despite our love of travel and international service, we instead chose to love and grow in the present, to continue serving our local communities, and vowed to seek future opportunities that would be inclusive of each other.

In our past, we have been incredibly fortunate to travel to Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, Central America, and Asia for service related travel and have been humbled by the human spirit, generosity of strangers, resilience of people and nature, and indescribable beauty of the world. Travel has opened our eyes to the fortunate lives we lead and the heroism of daily acts around us, whether it be a local farmer who produces a crop despite unfavorable weather, someone who quits smoking, a caregiver of an elderly parent, grocery stores that donate to food banks, or the family who chooses to adopt a pet from a shelter. We hope all people will seize the opportunity to travel to any physical destination of great personal meaning, travel towards a personal mental or physical goal, travel across a barrier in life, travel to a place to feel more connected to the earth, or travel toward a closer connection to loved ones.

In a time where technology morphs our landscape and sponging reality television supersedes global consciousness, we hope the world can remember to appreciate the simple beauty of the earth. We wish for people to appreciate everyday natural beauty, be kinder to one another, eat wisely, responsibly manage waste, and achieve a symbiotic relationship with plants and animals and simply put: enjoy the basic gifts of life. We always envisioned a wedding without cut flowers and as wedding favors, we wished to present people with seeds so they can enjoy nurturing their own patch of green to look upon, draw peace, and to love. 

3. What are your thoughts for an Earth Day event/celebration at Clay Hill Farm and how would you promote it?

We envision an Earth Day celebration at Clayhill Farm will inspire people to set a green lifestyle in motion through daily acts. The focus of our celebration idea is ubiquitous and one of our most beloved things: food! Too often, Earth Day is a day for people to remember being environmentally conscious, but they then quickly revert to less earth friendly ways of living. Just as other resources are wasted, food waste is a huge and growing problem in modern society, as is the amount of energy consumed for the food production industry. We have also become accustomed to processed foods that make us more disconnected to the earth and in the process generate chronic health issues. Clayhill Farms is perfectly poised to promote a lifestyle inspiring green eating and living. The focus of the celebration is a fun way of educating on eco-friendly practices centered on food growth, food preparation, and food waste renewal. The event can be promoted at local educational institutions, plant nurseries, grocery stores, and farmers’ markets

The Food focused Earth Day celebration would promote growing food on a large or small scale. For small children to adults, the Clay Hill Farms celebration would promote planting and getting all people interested in being outdoors again. It is so important for children and adults to value active time with nature more than sedentary time in front of a screen. I would encourage participants to bring in old bottles, jars, and pots as starter vessels and to have volunteers at the farm teach how to plant seedlings of fruits and vegetables each person enjoys. Watching their own plants grow would inspire them to make growing and tending plants a lifelong practice, consider eco-friendly food choices, and empower them with skills to grow their own foods even in small spaces.
For adults, a cook off challenge presents an innovative way to make individuals more cognizant of ways to make their food consumption and preparation more eco-friendly. For the recipe contest, the entrants are encouraged to submit their food entries prepared from their own “green recipes” in different food categories. Judging based on taste, use of locally grown ingredients, low energy consumption ingredients, and low energy cooking practices.
Renewing resources in the form of yard and food wastes would be the final component of the Food Focused Earth Day trifecta. It completes the circle of a food focused theme. At Clayhill farms people would learn how to renew resources via composting from both gardening products and food wastes. Empowering people to begin their own composting unit, however big or small, provides means of renewing waste in a very tangible way that can take place on a daily basis.