Learning how to cook is one of the most valuable skills you can ever obtain.  These skills were once passed down from generation to generation, but now millions of people lack even the most basic skills — as a result, it’s costing millions of lives and billions of dollars to cope with the increase in diet-related diseases. We need to get back to basics and share our cooking skills and knowledge so that everyone has access to good, nutritious food from scratch.

Food Revolution Day is a global day of action for people to make a stand for good food and essential cooking skills. It’s a chance for people to come together within their homes, schools, workplaces, and communities to cook and share their kitchen skills, food knowledge and resources. Food Revolution day aims to raise awareness about the importance of good food and better food education for everyone.

Eco-Schools USA, through our Sustainable Food and Healthy Living pathways, are proud to support and participate in Food Revolution Day.

What can you do for Food Revolution Day at school: 

• Get students excited about fresh produce by planting fruit and vegetable seeds on the day.  Cress is a nice and easy starting point, as well as lettuce or tomatoes.
  

  Food Revolution Day

• Download the Food Revolution Day Yogurt Pops recipe and give students a healthy dessert idea by showing them how to whip up the ingredients and freeze them in plastic molds.  Click the link to find other recipe ideas.
• Bring different fruits and vegetables into class and get students to taste them and guess what they are.  If they’re older get them to do a blind taste test.  Also discuss seasonality of fruits and vegetables – eating seasonally is a good thing – produce tends to be cheaper and tastier and it’s better for the environment!
• Arrange a tour of the local farmer’s market.
• Utilize the tools found at our Eco-Schools USA Food Revolution Day page.
• Need more ideas? Check out this Food Revolution Day School Ideas Google Hangout.

Watch and join Jamie Oliver along with millions all over the world in the fight for REAL FOOD!

Click here to view the embedded video.

A guest post from the Food Revolution Day team in the UK!

Students share their journalism pieces in their own communities. They also submit them to the Young Reporters competition for judging by a panel of jurors with a range of related expertise. The jury carefully reviewed each entry, provided helpful feedback to students on what made their pieces effective as well as suggestions for taking their work to the next level, and named winners for each media type in two age categories.

Young Reporters for the Environment USA is part of the international YRE program, which encompasses programs in 27 countries worldwide. Here in the United States, students between the ages of 13 and 18 participate. First place winners in our competition proceeded this week to the international competition for another round of judging.

The winning entries are as follows:

AGES 13-15

Writing

• 1st Prize: “Emerald Ash Borer” by Eli Cason (Cuba Middle School, Cuba, MO)
• Honorable Mention: “Pollution on the Meramec River” by Colten Barrett, Katie Wolfe, and Grace Steiger (Cuba Middle School, Cuba, MO)
• Honorable Mention: “White Nose Syndrome” by Alyssa Hemby (Cuba Middle School, Cuba, MO)

Photo

• 1st Prize: “The Buzz on the Bees” by Lexi Rockwell (Kingdom Builders Co-op, Savannah, GA)

Video

• 1st Prize: “A Tale of Two Trails” by Zachary Korff (Irving Middle School, Springfield, VA)

AGES 16-18

Writing

• 1st Prize: “Saving Energy Through Lighting” by Trey Zimmerman and Zach Major (Kenton County Academies of Innovation and Technology, Edgewood, KY)
• 2nd Prize: “Sustainability at ABRHS” by Denali Trimble, Dikshant Pradhan, and Kendall Butler (Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, Acton, MA)
• 3rd Prize: “Green Roof on the Kenton County Academies of Innovation and Technology Edgewood Campus” Building by Zack Fries and Marquea Schwing (Kenton County Academies of Innovation and Technology, Edgewood, KY)

Photo

• 1st Prize: “Pollinator” by Matthew Carras (Vermont Academy, Saxtons River, VT)

SPECIAL DISTINCTION

• “A Tale of Two Trails” (1st prize winner for video in the 13-15 years age category)

Young Reporters USA congratulates these students and all who submitted entries. We appreciate the time and energy they have dedicated to investigating important environmental issues and sharing the information they uncovered in writing, photo, and video. Balanced, objective, and solutions-oriented coverage of these issues is critical to protecting and restoring our communities and our planet. Young Reporters USA looks forward to expanding the program in years to come and helping more students hone their skills as environmental journalists.

For more about the Young Reporters USA program, including the criteria and schedule for the competition, see www.yre-usa.org

For links to the winning entries and comments from the jury about what makes an effective piece of environmental journalism, please visit www.yre-usa.org/winners.

Students at Copper Mesa Elementary School raise the school’s Eco-Schools USA Green Flag. Photo by Judith Kohler

“Way to go Cougars!” a student at Copper Mesa Elementary in Highlands Ranch exclaimed as the gym full of students cheered.

The occasion was a kind of pep assembly at the Denver-area school, but it was unlike any pep assembly I remember attending. The kids weren’t cheering for a sports team; they were excited about earning a Green Flag, the highest honor in the Eco-Schools USA program. The students didn’t sing the school fight song; they recited Copper Mesa’s “eco-code.”

“You’re part of an elite group of schools and students,” said Ann Morgan, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Rocky Mountains and Prairies Regional Center.

Ann Morgan, executive director of the regional NWF office, presents a Green Flag to Flagstone Elementary School.

The two Douglas County schools are the first in Colorado to earn Green Flags and as of April 25, were just the 14^th and 15^th nationwide.

Students at both schools were clothed in several different shades of green to mark the special day. During an outdoor assembly, Flagstone students waved green paper flags attached to pencils. Parents stood around the outside of the group, taking pictures and clapping along with the kids when the Eco-Schools flag was hoisted up the flagpole.

The raising of the Green Flags followed a lot of work by students and school staffs. Copper Mesa has saved more than 127,000 kilowatt hours of electricity the past three years with the help of energy audits. The school has saved about $400 by using both sides of copy paper and decreased trash pick-ups from five to two days a week.

Flagstone has reduced the amount of waste left from school lunches. The school provides vegetables for the community from its garden and has built and located bluebird houses to enhance the birds’ population.

Flagstone Elementary studets cheer as their school is awarded the Green Flag. Photo by Judith Kohler

“They found I left my light on once and they haven’t let me forget it,” she said.

Members of Copper Mesa’s student “Green Team” said the work has been worth it.

“We’ve had to be like a team,” 10-year-old Hailey Merrill said. “It’d be really cool if all the other schools could do it, too.”

Congratulations to the Class of 2013 for graduating with zero carbon debt!! Image via Microsoft Clip Art.

As an aside, I thought I was really clever and came up with the term carbon debt all on my own but then I googled it and…Oxford, the world’s most trusted dictionaries, even has a definition. Carbon debt is a thing! Just to make sure that you, Oxford and I are on the same page, carbon debt is “the imbalance between the carbon footprint of a particular country, group, person, etc., and any carbon offsetting that has been agreed or undertaken to counteract this.” In simpler terms, if you have carbon debt, you and your lifestyle choices produce more CO2 than your environment uses.

But don’t get upset! Don’t get discouraged! Carbon debt is easily relieved! You can drive less, eat local and lower on the food chain and plant some trees. And, you can invest in carbon offsets!

NWF Campus Ecology and Carbonfund.org Foundation are partnering to offer premium pricing to campuses looking to offset their carbon emissions. Click the photo to visit the NWF Carbonfund.org page.

1. Help your campus achieve carbon neutrality
2. Finance climate projects in three different categories
   1. Renewable energy and methane
   2. Energy efficiency and carbon credits
   3. Reforestation and avoided deforestation
3. Support NWF Campus Ecology programming

If carbon offsets make you feel like that vegetarian who eats bacon in secret, rest assured that all Carbonfund.org offset projects are third-party verified, certified and audited. Carbon offsets are the perfect way to account for emissions resulting from events (sports games and, ahem, graduation ceremonies) and travel, and can be a bridge between the present and your campus’s self-supplying energy future as it builds that infrastructure. Investing in Carbonfund.org’s innovative offset projects–landfill methane gas-to-energy conversion operations in the northeast, reforestation along the banks of the Mississippi River and truck stop electrification across the country– is something your campus can do while continuing to increase energy efficiency and building its own, on-site renewable energy portfolio.

So here’s an idea for that graduation check from your great-uncle Harry:  how about you invest it (or at least part of it, because let’s be real, graduating from college requires a bit of cash in the “celebration” fund) in a climate action project so you can graduate knowing that the CO2 emitted throughout your college career is being absorbed by climate-smart projects throughout the country and even the world. Better yet, pay a visit to the Commencement Committee, and ask them to look into offsetting your graduation ceremony.

If you have questions about Carbonfund.org offsets on your campus, email NWF Campus Ecology’s resident carbon offset expert, Kristy Jones at jonesk@nwf.org.

And most of all, HAPPY GRADUATION!! We wish we could sign all of your yearbooks personally with our soy ink pens, but just know that we have loved working with you! Best of all, this isn’t goodbye! Be sure to stay in touch by joining the NWF Emerging Leaders Initiative, which supports recent grads and young professionals (that’s you!) as they embark on careers in the environmental and conservation fields. The Emerging Leaders Initiative offers opportunities such as fellowships, leadership skills and professional development training, networking and more!

Keep in touch!

Love,

The NWF Campus Ecology Team

Related Reading:

• Find out more about the NWF Emerging Leaders Initiatve at www.nwf.org/emergingleaders and on facebook at facebook.com/nwfleaders
• Learn more about the NWF Campus Ecology partnership with the Carbonfund.org Foundation.
• Like NWF Campus Ecology on facebook, and follow @CampusEcology and @YouthforClimate on twitter.
• Sign up for the NWF Campus Ecology e-newsletter.

Our climate is changing at an alarming rate, and as a nation our young people are not prepared to provide the solutions necessary to mitigate and safeguard our world’s biodiversity, growing population, agricultural and transit systems and more.  In a digital age, we are able to connect in new and innovative ways and collaborate and create like never before.

The National Wildlife Federation’s Green STEM Initiative is the result of a magnificent collision between environment-based education and STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics); creating a new system that will provide a national workforce that’s ripe with skilled, knowledgeable, innovative, and technologically savvy citizens.

 To prepare our young people for a future that’s vividly different and uncertain, America needs to remedy what is often described as the “leaking” STEM pipeline.

Educators are looking for real answers.  Green STEM is a practical way, through disciplined instruction and experiential work on environmental and sustainability subjects, to help students better understand and be given relevant opportunities to inquire, assess, design, build and foster innovative solutions to environmental challenges and related technological needs. Students who are exposed to programs that incorporate useful STEM education see the world in a holistic way, gain skills in the process of inquiry, become better problem-solvers and inventors who can utilize their knowledge of math, science and technology to design and engineer innovative solutions to serious problems.  NWF’s Eco-Schools USA is primed and ready to help teachers facilitate learning experiences in Green STEM throughout K-12 as they engage students in greening solutions by addressing the building’s needs inside and out.

Nearly 4 in 5 STEM college students say that they decided to study STEM in high school or earlier…almost 20 percent knew before they even entered high school.  Microsoft Corporation

In order to help move students more smoothly through the STEM pipeline the highly anticipated, debated, and newly released Next Generation Science Standards have been developed to prepare our students for a better future, a future where they can be scientifically literate, competitive, and successful.  Educators will find many welcomed changes:

• K-12 Science Education Should Reflect the Interconnected Nature of Science as it is Practiced in the Real World.
• The Science Concepts in the NGSS Build Coherently from K-12.
• The NGSS Focus on Deeper Understanding of Content as well as Application of Content.
• Science and Engineering are integrated in the NGSS, from K-12.
• The NGSS are designed to prepare students for college, career, and citizenship.

For more information regarding National Wildlife Federation’s Green STEM Initiative                             please follow the link or contact us at eco-schoolsusa@nwf.org

Smart Grid to Battery Storage:

These were among the topics deliberated by 45 national workforce and education thought leaders who convened this week at the Pew Conference Center in Washington, DC for “Sustainability Skills Matter,” a meeting hosted by the Greenforce Initiative, a joint-program of the National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Program and Jobs for the Future with support from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation.  The meeting was co-sponsored by the American Association of Community College’s SEED Center and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS).

“We are seeing a shift in the economy,” observed Kevin Coyle, vice president for education and training at the National Wildlife Federation, but it is in its infancy; we need to be prepared across multiple sectors and our leaders need to be educated.  A smarter grid is one example: $150 billion per year is lost on power outages across the grid.  Battery storage, transportation- will also change soon.”

Brenda Dan-Messier, assistant secretary United States Department of Education, noted that efforts such as this convening help the US ”implement President Obama’s inaugural statement that, ‘We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”‘

Linking Colleges and Strengthening Credentials:

“Connecting community colleges via public transport to the local town or city would be a key way to reduce CO2 emissions and congestion,” explained architect and transportation planner, Susan Herre. ”It would also introduce young people early on to the walk-transit lifestyle, making them more discerning consumers of neighborhood types as they choose where to work and live after graduation.”

To effectively advance projects like these along with students’ skill sets, Jane Weissman, president and CEO of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), encouraged community colleges to offer industry-vetted credentials.

State and System-wide Skills Evaluation:

In addition to offering credentials in specialized industries, Rob Holsten, dean of continuing education and sustainability at Wilson Community College in North Carolina, described the “system-wide curriculum review process undertaken in North Carolina to better align education across multiple disciplines with today’s economy, including adding employer competencies and creating a common core for all technical programs.”

Workforce Priorities for Sustainability Emerge:

Employers, industry association, higher education and ngo leaders from agriculture, renewable energy, manufacturing and transportation sectors, developed more than 150 ideas in nine categories, including ways to deepen engagement with employers, support community college capacity, link the classroom to real-world project experience, increase awareness to expand demand for sustainability skills and improve labor market information.

Eight key recommendations emerged through an on-line comment, prioritization and voting system administered by FacilitatePro.  Among these were:

1. Engaging leading employers to better inform community and other colleges about the sustainability skills they value and want.
2. Integrating sustainability skills into every career pathway.
3. Providing more paid internship programs, mentoring and apprenticeships and other “hands on” training opportunities for students so they can demonstrate skills, knowledge and abilities.
4. Using campus-based projects as an opportunity to teach real-world application of sustainability skills for students.
5. Exploring opportunities to help businesses make their operations more sustainable and linking education and training around sustainability skills to this.
6. Working with economic development groups to identify sustainability skills needed by new potential employers in a region.
7. Connecting sustainability skills to existing state efforts to recruit manufacturing employers and connecting community colleges to these employers for skills development and work experience or employment opportunities, and
8. Identifying industries with an aging workforce and encouraging them to protect the future competitiveness of their industry by partnering with colleges to redesign and redeliver more effective training program (noting the example of PG&E in CA providing internships and apprenticeships together with 27 community colleges.)

“Ultimately, with the help of our community colleges and employers,” said Coyle, “values and attitudes will change and we will have a kinder, gentler and cleaner world.”

The ideology of “sustainable dining” is a fairly new concept on campuses. While students and universities have been focusing on energy efficiency and policy, of course important issues, there has been another looming shift in our country where people are beginning to focus on their food and what their body intakes. We’re not just talking calorie counting, but examining what farmers and food processors put in the things we eat. In the light of this shift, students are demanding their school dining services think about these things as well. Additionally, how far food travels is a considering factor. Reducing the carbon footprint of your campus includes decreasing the distance your food is travelling from “Farm to Table”. Basically, buying local, naturally grown produce and naturally fed meat is important for the sustainability of human health and the health of our planet.  And of course, in a still largely agricultural state like Georgia, opportunities for this should not be hard to find.

Friday’s workshop began with a keynote from K. Rashid Nuri, founder of Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture. Truly Living Well is an organization with two community gardens in Metro Atlanta’s urban neighborhoods. However, they do much more than gardening. TLW has a number of programs educating Atlanta and the state community on urban agriculture. Nuri came and gave a very inspirational speech on his background, starting Truly Living Well and his opinions on urban farming. We were reminded of why we were there and why this work is so important.

Jett Hatthaway’s lunch time presentation on Kennesaw State Students for Environmental Sustainability’s new student run farmer’s market

Campus Ecology’s Southeast Campus Field Coordinator, Eriqah Foreman-Williams, holding two new friends at Hunter Cattle Farm in Brooklet, GA

“It was very inspiring to see others who are breaking new ground in the ‘good food’ movement. It was such a pleasure to hear stories about the creative work colleges and universities are doing across the state, in the area of sustainable food. Momentum for this movement is growing, and it’s very exciting!”

I believe this was the necessary guidance needed to drive sustainable food initiatives forward on Georgia university campuses. In the next year, my plan is to organize strategic planning meetings with students, administrators, and university dining staff together to brainstorm how to tailor this new venture to their individual campuses.

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Lesley Jones (left) and Laura Hickey (right) enjoy some sightseeing in Washington, D.C.

I was privileged to visit one of the USA’s first Eco-Schools, Churchill Road Elementary School in Fairfax County.  So much work is going on there to reduce waste, particularly food waste through composting and sharing as well as recycling and upcycling.  The children learn so much in practical ways through growing their own fruit and vegetables – it was very inspiring.

I was also very interested to learn more about the history and development of NWF from Kevin Coyle and Laura Hickey and spend time in their beautiful offices.  I managed to find time to take a walk in the woodlands around the office and was very excited to see a cardinal.  (We just don’t have such beautiful and colourful birds in the UK.)

I had such a great time and wonderful hospitality from Laura and NWF.  I hope I can visit again some day.

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We thank Lesley for her kind words and guidance in support of our programs!

Students locking up their bikes. Image courtesy of Nike

Bike Train

Since 2009 Jeff has worked with staff at Wolftrap Elementary to establish what is called a bike train. Once a month kids meet at Jeff’s house and bike 1.8 miles to school along a predefined route. They pick up additional riders along the way and use back roads to avoid congestion. The bike train has been going strong for four years, with students biking to school on cold January days when it is 18 degrees and snowy, and on hot June days when it is 85 degrees.

Recently Jeff has started working to expand the bike train program to other schools in the district. This past May he coordinated a Bike and Walk to School Challenge (now in its fifth year), encouraging schools to compete against each other by recruiting students to bike to school every day for a week. Awards were given to students at the seven participating schools.  Support for the challenge came from school board members, as well as INOVA (a local hospital system), the local transportation department, the police and a group of local bike racers. Jeff has also joined other schools on their bike trains and regularly attends PTA meetings to answer questions for schools looking to start a walking and biking program.

Image courtesy of Nike

Benefits

Bike Safety

When students participate in one of Jeff’s bike trains, they not only learn how to be comfortable on a bike, they also learn basic bike safety which is something not currently taught in Fairfax County Public Schools. “Through this program kids ultimately get to the point where they can bike on their own,” says Jeff. “And parents get over the fear factor they have about letting their kids bike to school.” In addition, Wolftrap Elementary School held a Bike Rodeo last spring for those kids who don’t get the opportunity to bike to school.

Congestion & Pollution

The bike train program also helps to decrease the number of parents who are driving their kids to school. When parents drop their kids off at school, it contributes to congestion and carbon emissions. A large number of students are within walking distance of the school so Jeff is working to encourage those kids to get out of the car.

Physical Fitness

Image courtesy of Nike

Start a Program

Here are some tips from Jeff for starting a bike train at your school:

• Start by recruiting a small group of kids and parents that you know at the school. It will be easier for you to enforce biking rules if you already have a good relationship with members of the group.
• Get the PTA and principal on board to help support the program.
• Establish and scout out a biking route ahead of time. Avoid major roads if possible.
• Don’t let backpacks and instruments be a barrier.  Recruit parents to drive those items to school or use an old kiddie trailer to haul the stuff.
• Require that kids already know how to ride a bike without training wheels. The focus should not be on teaching kids how to ride, but on teaching them how to be safe and comfortable on a bike.
• Participate in Bike to School Day! This is a great opportunity for students to feel that they are part of something that is happening at the national level.
• Don’t take “no” for an answer, and be prepared for complications at the school and district level as you work to get your bike train rolling.
• Visit the Eco-Schools USA website and learn how our transportation pathway can help support your bike train program.

Last autumn, I had the opportunity to introduce NWF’s Cool School Challenge (CSC) to schools throughout Whatcom County, Washington as part of a partnership with the Community Energy Challenge (CEC) and the EPA’s Climate Showcase Communities Grant. The schools I worked with were able to save energy, shrink their carbon footprint, and in return, protect the planet. It was very rewarding to observe students’ excitement about taking energy-saving action into their own hands.

Photo courtesy RESources

With regard to meeting current standards, 5th grade teachers found that since their “newest science kit is all about energy, the types, forms, transfers, etc… thinking about energy in our classroom, school, and homes was a great fit” (5th grade teacher). “Real-life connections work with math and science concepts,” said a 6th grade teacher. Many teachers were able to conduct the program in conjunction with their science curriculum as well as involve their entire school.

Photo courtesy RESources

Overall, teachers were excited about and satisfied with the program. “This was a great program that my kids really enjoyed” said one teacher. “(There was) lots of valuable material covered which affect all of us every day on Earth,” said another.

RE Sources for Sustainable Communities worked on the CSC/CEC partnership for 3 years. During that time, 18 schools in six Whatcom County Districts participated, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 245,284 pounds.

This was such a successful program, and I really believe the students gained a lot more awareness about their use of energy and electricity, and how making simple changes in their lives can make a big impact.

The Cool School Challenge was developed by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, and transferred over to the National Wildlife Federation so that it could be incorporated into the Eco-Schools USA program. The Eco-Schools USA program is part of the largest green school in the world, and aims at greening the school building, grounds, curriculum and student experience.

Learn more about Eco-Schools USA and how you can do the Cool School Challenge at your school!