As climate change intensifies in the Desert Southwest, growing food in a desert system will become more challenging.  The goals of the Desert Oasis Teaching Garden (DOT) are to teach the community how to grow food in a hotter, drier land using fewer resources, increasing soil fertility, enhancing pollinator habitat, and integrating ancestral knowledge. The DOT garden will teach these goals through school curriculum, workshops, community workdays and events, and presentations. Karen's hope is to provide organic, campus-grown food for the school dining hall, campus farmer’s market, and local food banks. She hopes to empower students to teach agro-ecology, the impacts of climate change on food security and water resources, a water and land ethic, and to help the community implement the skills and knowledge gained into homes, business, schools and gardens. Currently, the school composts all food waste onsite. The DOT garden will use this compost to increase soil fertility and water holding capacity, which promotes carbon sequestration and uses less water for irrigation. The DOT garden will harvest rain water from the school’s science building and reduce water consumption using drip irrigation and water harvesting earth works. The DOT garden will satisfy a community need, as most area school gardens do not have the capacity to reach beyond their school grounds to teach the larger community. In addition, the focus on food production using less water, local resources, ancestral knowledge and low-tech solutions to resource conservation is not yet well-developed in the community.