Green Grant Winners
Angelica Murdukhayeva, 20
Field Guide for East River Park
Angelica hopes to change the use of the East River Park into an eco-friendly experience by creating a Field Guide. She believes that access to environmental education is more important as problems of environmental degradation and global warming persist. Working with the Lower East Side Ecology Center and with CHERP (Community Hooked on East River Park), Angelica will design the Field Guide including descriptions and photos along with a section on edible plants. Her hope is that this will be an effective tool for environmental education and serve to connect park visitors to nature and even foster greater community connections.
Kristen Powers, 15
Green Your School
Kristen has created a four year plan to make her school greener. The first initiative Kristen plans to launch this fall is the Turn it Off policy which rewards students and teachers for shutting off electronics when not in use. Other projects include the Open Shades policy, using recycled paper for printing, composting lunch trays, and repairing the greenhouse at her school to make it a learning center, and her most extensive project is to put a green roof on one of the school buildings. She hopes these programs can be completed within fours years, but just in case she is creating a Green Your School Committee, to insure that this is a continuing and growing project.
Sean Smith, 18
The Green Rail
Sean hopes to create his Green Rail as a holistic implementation of the green technology that already exists. The Green Rail is intended to provide social motivation to increase dependency on green energy, and accountability. The Green Rail in its conceptual stages is a mechanical device that utilizes the upward motion of human movement to generate electricity, which would move through a series of gears replicating a hand crank system. The energy would be collected and used in the building where the rail exists or store electricity for the energy grid of the building. Meanwhile its presence would serve as an educational source with an LCD display calculating energy output for everyone to see the difference that is being made while using the rail itself.
K. Nikki Williamson, 22
Cleaning Piney Creek
The Piney Creek Watershed is a major tributary to the large New River, however it is contaminated with fecal matter, and so it is of no use to the population, and is unsafe. Nikki and her team plan to fix this problem by researching the water itself, taking samples and testing over a period of nine months. With these results as evidence, Nikki and her team will take action against those who are violating the waste water codes. The goal is for serious improvements in the water over the next five years, and to make New River a place where people can go fishing or other recreational activities without concern for their health.
K. Jeffrey Smith, 17
Build Park Benches to Encourage the Use of Public Transportation
In order to motivate people to use public transportation in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Jeffrey is constructing concrete benches at bus stops to make public transportation a better and easier experience. Jeffrey has received help from local businesses to donate supplies to help him construct these benches himself, and to build a team to place them throughout the township. Jeffrey hopes that his benches will encourage people to take public transportation instead of driving, and that these efforts will reduce the carbon footprint of individuals, and as a collective community.
Sarah Jo Lambert, 15
Green Environmental Center
Sarah Jo is designing a Green Environmental Center in association with her Girl Scouts camp in her effort to help educate children about environmental issues. The building itself is under-way and will be entirely ecologically friendly, including one interior wall built from aluminum cans, and windows made of glass bottles. Younger Girl Scouts will help Sarah Jo with the construction aspects so they can participate in this center for change. The Green Grant money will go towards purchasing the solar panels and batteries that will be used to supply 100% of the energy needed to operate the Environmental Center.
Michael Uhl, 25
Gearing up Generation G in the EcoMachine
Michael’s project is to create an EcoMachine as a method to teach adolescents in underprivileged areas about important environmental issues. The EcoMachine will create a mini-ecosystem where students and teachers can learn about their local environments and their individual impact upon it. The goal is to create a safe atmosphere that will empower students and professionals to ask new questions, to engage in new ecological subjects, and have first hand experience and training to integrate these teaching methods into their own schools.
Sarah Sykora, 12
Operation Eco-Lunch
Sarah is working to improve the recycling program at her middle school, by extending it from paper waste in the classroom to limiting waste in the cafeteria. Sarah would like to encourage students to use lunch boxes and reusable containers to create less overall waste. To achieve this Sarah will first create and post instructive posters about recycling, and then hold contests at each lunch period to see who can generate the least amount of trash. Sarah hopes that with these added incentives students will help to decrease the amount of trash by at least 25% in a four-week period.
Justin Isaf, 25
Groundworks
To educate the youth in his area about the importance of environmental awareness and knowledge, the Groundworks project has created a community garden as a space to learn about these important issues. The goals of the project are to increase organic gardening, contribute to community development, foster positive social interaction, and increase environmental awareness particularly in youth. By creating skill based workshops about different methods of organic gardening, school aged community members can attend and then connect with one another through common interests and common work while integrating the importance of organic gardening.
Megan Phillips, 23
The Growing Program
To accomplish Megan’s personal goal that “Everybody Eat!” she is working to launch an organic sustainable nonprofit urban Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) focused on feeding and educating low income families and youth. The farming plots will be located on business rooftops, city lands, and privately pledged spaces, and will be encouraged to do so by granting them carbon offsets. The goal is to reach as many people in need as possible by enrolling them in this program.