Impactful Citizen Project for Environmental Awareness

Green Day Carmen, Grace, and Lorelei

Definition of Citizenship Being a citizen means that you pay attention and act to change your world for the better with others, not only concerning what affects you directly at this very moment, but also what future generations in other places are going to live through.

Educate about our issue (stats and facts) Greenland lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2006, and the rate of Antarctica's ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade. The global sea level has risen approximately 8 inches this century. The rate at which this is happening in the past two decades has been more than two times higher than in the last century. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the acidity of the ocean waters has risen about 30%. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year. N. (2019, April 23). Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know? Retrieved May 2, 2019, from https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Why we were interested Given all of these facts, how could a decent citizen not try and make some impact on the world around them? Yet 71.4% of 9th graders say that they rarely or never think about their impact on the environment before they do something, and 43% say that they spend more than four hours on their phone doing things other than homework. In educating students and encouraging them to act, we hoped that saving our Earth could be a possibility. Whether or not this could be will depend on our generation.

Our plan Our plan for the citizen project was to create a green day event to raise awareness and inform students about protecting our environment, alternative energy, reducing their carbon footprint, and taking care of Columbia. The event will be on May 21, and includes booths from non-for-profit environmental organizations and students. After school we will plant a tree on school property, near the water gardens. Here are some of our steps to achieve this:

Emails For a very long time we thought that we would need to present to STUCO about our project idea. We emailed STUCO president Drew Morris (who never responded), but figured out in a verbal conversation with Ms Gregory that we d have to email Ruckstad about planting the tree and the booths. Ruckstad directed us to emailing the CPS grounds department for planting the tree and David Egan for the scheduling of the green day. The scheduling was confirmed by Egan and we began emailing different organizations. We began by emailing eight different ones, and some have already responded. We emailed Ms Gregory about putting a message in the Infobruin for the event.

Infobruin Message and Posters We have a message in the Infobruin advertising our event, and we put posters around the school. To put the message in the Infobruin we emailed Ms Gregory. We also made a logo for our event in order to make it more memorable.

The Tree We tried to carefully pick a tree that would be a good fit for our vision. We decided on a White Swamp oak because it is a native plant that will grow to be a very good shade tree.

(Some) Organizations We Contacted MEEA- Missouri Environmental Education Association. They hold conferences, provide lessons and activities on their website, and more. Renew Missouri- Advance legislation, pass statewide ballot initiatives, craft ordinances, and more for the advancement of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Missouri. The Audubon Society of Missouri- Help to preserve birds and other wildlife in Missouri. Citizen s Climate Lobby- create the political will for climate solutions by enabling individual breakthroughs in the exercise of personal and political power. MOSEIA- Drastically expanded Missouri s solar industry.

The Event Only two of the organizations were able to come to our Green Day event. To make up for this, we held a bake sale and donated the money we made to those who came. We had several people that we know bake cookies for the event, which we sold at our own booth. We decided our own prices, set it up, compensated those who provided us with cookies, sold the goods, and assisted MEEA and Stream Teams United in setting up their booths. In the end, we were able to give both MEEA and Stream Teams United 25$ from our bake sale alone.

Set Backs We had to send a lot of emails during the course of this project, and in many cases we emailed the wrong person. We were also told no by some of the organizations that we contacted to set up a booth, and some of the other replies took a while to get back to us. In the end only two responded, so we quickly had to come up with a solution; our bake sale. From our setbacks, we did learn how difficult it is to set up events like this, but also how the people at Rock Bridge are willing to help you accomplish your goals.

The result Our event was an opportunity for students concerned about their environment to speak up, and our group was able to give money to support them. Our planted tree will be a physical display of the difference you can make with the help of RBHS. While some staff members might seem like they want to bring you down, their goal is to help you succeed. We have plans to continue and expand this further in the years that follows, rather than forgetting about this project when we become Sophomores.