Paige Vaccaro was born on Long Island to loving parents who happened to come from different racial and religious backgrounds. Her mother, Paula is Jewish and of Russian and English descent, whose father Milton served as a pilot in WWII. Her father, Michael, was an African-American raised Baptist in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with family roots that traced back to slavery. He attended a segregated school and faced racism in the height of the Civil Rights Movement while on athletic scholarship at Tennessee State. The two met while teaching in the same elementary school, kindergarten and physical education respectively, just 7 years after the Loving case made interracial marriage legal.
Paige began writing poetry in 7th grade and throughout her schooling was recognized as having a gift with words. The summer of her junior year of high school she took a journalism course at NYU for young women of color and that was where her passion for using her writing and eye for photography to promote social change. She went on to study English and Political Science at Rutgers University and graduated with honors as a Henry Rutgers Scholar. After college, Paige was accepted into Teach for America and completed student teaching in the Bronx before relocating to Baltimore where she taught 3rd grade and earned her MAT in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University.
After 12 years of teaching in public schools in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Newark, and Ocean Township, NJ, Paige relocated to Atlantic County and set out to forage new paths to bridge the gaps within and between communities by founding the nonprofit organization, Communities Revolutionizing Open Public Spaces (C.R.O.P.S.). C.R.O.P.S. connects communities through farmers markets, community gardens, paid internships, and educational programming. www.cropsnj.org She has also penned a few blogs such as www.pushingthependulum.com and started a small business called Plant A Seed, LLC where she provides educational and garden consulting as well as yoga, meditation and Vedic numerology.
Paige’s zeal for helping others parallels her deep-rooted connection to the earth, which she believes is a great equalizer. By empowering people to connect with nature and with one another, she believes that everyone benefits regardless of their age, socioeconomic status, experience, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. She believes with unequivocal faith that small, positive gestures have a deep and lasting impact on the community at large and the individual within. Her father used to say, “Girl, no grass grows under your feet!” That saying is true because you can always find her on the move with her four children right beside her, planting seeds everywhere she can and nurturing them with love.
