Game for Change

2015 Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The 9^th place winners of the 2014 Caring for Our Watersheds competition were Maddie Catling and Sarah Abt from St. James School. As part of their Global Leadership Class, these students were involved with the development of a web game entitled “Game for Change”.

This game teaches people about global environmental issues, including the state of our watersheds. The objective of the game is to reach a certain standard of living so you can sustain your life. The more developed the country you choose, the easier it is to reach this sustainable level. You ‘win’ when you have: 50 Health Points, 50 Water Points, 30 Education Points, $75 Global Bucks or a biosand filter or plumbing. Once players complete the game, they can visit the “actions you can take” page for lesson plans, stewardship information and ideas about how to decrease environmental footprints.

Through the development of the “Game For Change”, students from St. James school not only learned about their local watershed and environmental stewardship, they were able to educate people worldwide about the state of our watershed and how to have a positive impact on the environment regardless or economic status or geographic area.

Pollinators for the Watershed

2015 Bawlf, Alberta, Canada

Leah Marshall, grade 11 student from Bawlf School, grew up on a farm in the country and had seen a lot of the native forests and grassland be removed for increasing agricultural land. When the Marshall’s started beekeeping as a new hobby, Leah learned more about the threats to pollinators, such as decreasing habitat and wanted to do something to help. Her idea was to encourage students to plant small flower gardens that would provide homes and food for pollinators. In her words:

“The premise of this project revolves around making a plausible and realistic difference in recovering the populations of local wild pollinators (primarily bees). We plan on doing this via both the distribution of perennial wild flower seed packets and the education of our youth in this major issue that impacts us as humans immensely”.

Leah decided to focus on getting the word and the seed packets to grade 7 students who had a biodiversity unit in their science curriculum. She contacted grade 7 teachers across the Battle River Watershed to ask them to teach their students about local pollinators, and in exchange would mail a class set of seed packages. Each seed package had an informational brochure so that the students could learn more about the project and pollinators. Leah sent out 500 seed packages, the flowers of which are now popping up across the watershed!

Water Conservation Education

2015 Sacramento, California, USA

As California is in its fourth year of drought, Jack Gumbiner and Sebastian Simmons of The MET Sacramento High School, wanted to increase awareness of the situation among their peers. While their fellow students had no doubt heard about the drought in the media, they did not seem to be taking any or enough action to conserve water. Jack and Sebastian wanted to not only educate students on the severity of the current situation, but also to provide easy ways the students could conserve water. They felt that hearing it from students their own age may have a different effect, and may inspire some teens to make simple changes to their daily lives. With project funds from Caring for Our Watersheds, Jack and Sebastian put together a water conservation lesson that included a fun interactive demonstration of water saving showerheads. They also designed and printed posters to hang at school and magnets to distribute to students and staff.

Nature’s Voice

2015, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The students of this high school run their own radio show. Their project is to create a radio program to promote local birds and trees to the community, something they consider in need of better care.

Patricia Laffrati, a sustainable journalist, assisted in the implementation of the project by giving a workshop to the students about radio programming and digital media. In the workshop they learnt how to create and program materials for the school.

One highlight of this project for the students is that it is applicable to all school curriculum disciplines, meaning everyone can get involved. It not only educates the community on the
importance of the diversity of its flora and fauna, but the students learn more through these hands on, engaging experiences.

Watershed Ambassadors

2014 Washington, DC, USA

After spending the year learning about the Anacostia River Watershed and the varied environmental issues that it faces, sixth grade students at the SEED School of Washington wanted to share their knowledge with the rest of the school. The last week of April, the students facilitated “Watershed Awareness Week”, during which they went to various classes explaining the importance of watersheds and the impact we have on them. Additionally, the students placed signs around campus encouraging people to recycle, painted rain barrels, and handed out “Watershed Ambassador” buttons. The week culminated in the unveiling of the updated school garden that the students had been working on all year.

At the Caring for Our Watersheds finals, students shared examples of the posters and buttons they had created and pictures of their vegetable garden. Their project won 2nd place in the 2014 Caring for Our Watersheds competition.

Play Away Smoke App

2014 Washington, DC, USA

When students at Roots Public Charter School walked around their neighborhood to determine its environmental weakness and strengths, they noticed a lot of litter, specifically cigarette butts. They recognized that smoking isn’t only a health issue, but a source of harmful pollution in the Anacostia and Potomac watersheds. In an effort to get people to recognize the negative effects of cigarette smoke and litter, the students designed an app called, “Play Away the Smoke”.

The app is a game in which players move to the next level by correctly answering questions about the impact of cigarette smoke on the environment, economy, and human health.

The Roots students’ project was the 1st place finalist in the 2014 Caring for Our Watersheds competition. Through the summer following the finals, the students and their teacher Carlene Burton worked with an Android app developer to bring their concept to reality, and their contracted services for app development cost

$6,500, provided through implementation funding from Nutrien.

S.T.O.P. – Storm Sewer Trash Only Pollutes

2014 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Justen Saini from Greystone Heights School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, proposed the idea of using informational brochures to educate Saskatonians on the proper ways and appropriate locations to dispose of household hazardous waste products. In his proposal, Justen made the connection between improper dumping of pollutants into Saskatoon’s storm drains to the lack of convenient hazardous drop off locations in the city. He emphasized that the current drop off location at the Sasktel Centre in the north-end of the city and its changing drop off times made it difficult for many citizens to access its services. This, therefore, increased the likelihood that citizens would look for alternate ways to dispose of wastes such as used oil, household chemical products, unused fertilizers, pesticides and other types of wastes. These
alternative ways often meant right into Saskatoon storm drains! Justen advocated for there to be another hazardous waste drop of location in the east-end of the city in order to reduce the cases of hazardous waste disposal into storm drains. Justen also proposed that his informational pamphlets be included in the City of Saskatoon’s utility bills and in the City of Saskatoon’s educational programs and informational booths. These brochures would make Saskatonians aware that any wastes that enter storm sewers proceed directly into the South Saskatchewan River. His brochures also outlined the operating hours of the Sasktel Centre drop off times and location.

Following his verbal presentation at the 2014 Caring for our Watersheds final competition, Justen Saini was invited by City Councilor Charlie Clark to make a presentation in front of City Council. On May 4, 2014 Justen Saini made a presentation to the City of Saskatoon Council advocating the recommendation to establish a new hazardous waste disposal location for the east-side of the city and to include his educational brochures in the utility bill and in City of Saskatoon educational programming. Following his presentation the City Councilors made a recommendation for another drop off location to be considered for the 2015 season. Currently, the City of Saskatoon is working with Justen to include his STOP pamphlets into the City of Saskatoon educational material and utility bill.

Red Maple Seedling Fundraiser

2014 Trenton, Ontario, Canada

Chantal, a grade 8 student from Murray Centennial Public School won fourth place for her “Red Maple Seedling fundraiser” proposal. Chantal’s idea was to hold a fundraiser at her school to sell Red Maple Seedlings and use the profits to purchase a water bottle filling station for her school. Chantal’s goal was to increase awareness about the importance of planting trees in our watershed and educate her school community about the negative impacts of disposable water bottles to the environment.

Chantal purchased 320 Red Maple Seedlings for $175.00 with the guidance of Tree’s Ontario and financial assistance from Murray Centennial Public School. The fundraiser was held in April 2014 and each seedling was sold for $5.00 generating a revenue of $1475.00. The profits from the fundraiser cover the cost of purchasing one water bottle filling station for the school.

With an additional $1305.00 from Caring for Our Watershed Implementation Funds, Murray Centennial Public School will be receiving a second water bottle filling station to meet the needs of the school with population of 600 staff and students.

The two water bottle filling stations were installed March 2015.

Water Conservation Education Booth

2014 Elk Grove, California, USA

California is currently faced with a severe water shortage and extreme drought conditions. The need for water conservation is critical and water agencies are appealing to the public for help. Students in the Green Club at Valley High are concerned that students and members of their community are unaware of how serious the current predicament has become and how to address the situation with water conservation measures. Judy Phu, Asia Xiong, and Jamilah Ahmach-Antolin presented their proposal to address this situation at the 2014 Caring for Our Watershed Finals. Their solution included preparing a community outreach booth geared toward water conservation for the on-campus community health fair.

The community health fair is attended by hundreds of students from the feeder middle and elementary schools as well as other community members, providing an excellent opportunity to reach a large number of people in a short period of time. Green Club members designed a water education game (similar to Chutes and Ladders) where younger students could play and see water conservation measures in a fun-interactive way. They gathered pamphlets and information from local water agencies to give to visitors as well as secured donations of water conservation related prizes (low-flow showerheads, shower timers, toilet leak test kits, etc.) to giveaway to game winners. Booth visitors were encouraged to sign a 20% water conservation pledge. Those that signed the pledge were entered in the raffle to win larger water conservation prizes (low-flow toilet). Through their creative, educational booth, they drew attention to an important watershed issue and exposed youth and community members to ways they could make a difference.

Allowing Children to Learn and Experience Nature

2014 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Maria Bunk wants children to connect with nature. “Keeping good care of our watershed and environment is very important because there is not much fresh drinking water left which means we need to learn to respect and care for our fragile mother nature in a more responsible way.”

Maria proposed an environmental education program for her school’s nursery school that includes an activity book that she created; an in-class aquarium for children to learn about water as habitat; seeds to plant to learn about how things grow; and a watershed model the class will create from clay. Using this model, the nursery school students will learn about pollution and get to experiment with how water moves through their watershed.

“I think that eduating young children is a great benefit because it will create a ripple effect. Children enjoy sharing their knowledge with others which means the message will be passed on to a bigger scheme of people!”