Filmmakers and Founders of Green Our Planet

Ciara Byrne and Kim MacQuarrie Create a Nourishing Legacy

Ciara Bryne is a filmmaker from Ireland, who has traveled the world, is an Obama Fellow, and co-founder of Green Our Planet—a nonprofit headquartered in Las Vegas that is part of the sustainable food movement. Ciara’s life partner and co-founder of GOP is Kim MacQuarrie, a native Nevadan, a four-time-Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, anthropologist, and author of two books—Life and Death in the Andes, and The Last Days of the Incas.

Ciara and Kim aren’t the kind of people who just talk about doing things. They’re the kind who roll up their sleeves, see what needs to be done, dive in, reach out, inspire others, pull all the pieces together, find solutions to obstacles, and create something meaningful.

Since moving to Las Vegas in 2010, their nonprofit, Green Our Planet, has brought teachers, farmers, chefs, and corporate donors together to fund and plant vegetable gardens in over 125 schools in Las Vegas.

There was no program or curriculum for them to follow when they started Green Our Planet, so they had to develop everything. They have become so proficient and knowledgeable—leaders in this endeavor—that schools in other states have reached out to them for their help and guidance.

Kim was even contacted by a remote village in the Arctic, who wanted to purchase a hydroponic system they developed, so they could grow vegetables year round.

The beauty of the school gardens is that the teachers use them as an outdoor classroom to teach math and science. The kids get engaged planting the seeds and seeing them grow. Ciara worked with the teachers to develop a curriculum for grades K-5 so each age group has their own responsibilities, whether it’s bug patrol, pulling weeds, etc. You can read more details in the article.

The vegetable gardens also provide an opportunity for the children to bring the produce they grow to a farmers market, where they learn how to operate a business.

Ciara and Kim have also partnered with more than 40 chefs who show the kids how to make smoothies and simple recipes using the produce that they grow. The learning experience completes a full circle that includes, planting, growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, and selling their fruits, vegetables, and herbs,

Thanks to Ciara and Kim, their staff at Green Our Planet, the sponsors, teachers, farmers, and chefs, once barren school landscapes are now thriving. Children who only saw food wrapped in plastic or boxes, now appreciate the wonder of nature and are eating healthier. These children are then bringing their knowledge home to their parents.

World Travelers

Ciara and Kim are world travelers, who care deeply about the planet and the people who inhabit it. We are fortunate to have them in Las Vegas, but wherever they may go in the future, they will continue to spread seeds of change that will help make the world a better place.

Ciara is from Dublin, but she has spent a lot of time in other countries. She lived in Tehran, Iran from the age of four to eight when her father went there to work on oil rigs; she was in Berlin in 1989 right after the wall came down and East and West Germany were reunited. She went to Prague, Czechoslovakia, (now the Czech Republic) when the anti-Communist revolution opened the country up to visitors; and she happened to be in Russia, much to her parents’ dismay, in 1991, when the government instigated a coup and tried to overthrow President Gorbachev.

Kim, who grew up in Las Vegas, has been to some of the most remote places in the world. He got his Master’s Degree at the University of Lima in Peru. For six months he lived with the remote Yora tribe in the Upper Amazon.

He directed a TV episode about a tribe of cannibals in Papua New Guinea, who scarified their bodies to look like crocodiles; and he spent a year, on and off, in Eastern Siberia filming grizzly bears, Steller’s sea eagles, salmon, puffins, and Arctic foxes for a documentary called Kamchatka; Siberia’s Forbidden Wilderness.

They spent a month in Africa with their friend, Dr. Richard Leakey, a controversial Kenyan wildlife conservationist, and paleo anthropologist, who spent decades trying to save the elephants from extinction.

Angelina Jolie was at one time in discussion about producing and directing a film about Dr. Leakey’s battle with ivory poachers in Kenya, but the project didn’t happen.

Here’s an article about the slaughter of elephants. It is heartbreaking that they are not only killed by ivory poachers for their tusks, which are sold mostly in China, but elephants are also killed by egotistical, arrogant, trophy hunters like Eric and Donald Trump Jr. who have posed next to the magnificent wildlife they have slaughtered.

A dentist from Minnesota named, Walter Palmer, lured a beloved lion in Africa named Cecil, out of the protected game reserve, and shot him with a bow and arrow, before killing him with a gun and beheading him.

LIFE LESSON: A great motto is “Think globally, act locally.” We should be informed about things that affect the world like climate change, wildlife extinction, food scarcity, civil rights, etc.

Then we can take some kind of action in our own corner of the world, our own backyard that makes a difference. For Ciara and Kim that was planting vegetable gardens in schools.

Bon Appetite.

Here’s the entire article about Ciara and Kim and their exciting adventures.

Visit Kim MacQuarrie’s website.