UPDATE – Breaking News – The Earth Task Force has WON the 2011 Center for Resource Conservation’s Youth Conservation ReWard!

Congratulations goes out to ETF on a ReWard well deserved!  Keep up the strong work!

###

Congratulations! The Earth Task Force’s Board of Super Heroes (BOSH) was chosen as a finalist for the Center for Resource Conservation‘s Youth Conservation ReWard.  These four outstanding students, Kelly Percy, Kelly Muller, Malcolm Marshall, and Aleyna Porreca, are all leading members of New Vista High School’s (NVHS) Earth Task Force (ETF).

The Earth Task Force (ETF) is an environmental club at New Vista High School in Boulder, which came into fruition from a small group of CAP students wanting to do more for NVHS.  CAP is the Community Adventure Program, an environmental education class offered at New Vista High School in Boulder.  Both ETF and CAP are sponsored by the Cottonwood Institute.

Truly all of the students of the ETF have achieved amazing things at their school: having solar panels and low flow toilets installed, buying vending misers for the vending machines, hosting an annual all local lunch for the entire school for free, inviting the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) to present to the school. And the members of BOSH do even more.

BOSH meets on a weekly basis, outside of school time, to plan an agenda for the upcoming week’s meetings. They pick up the slack if their peers do not finish what they’ve started, and they model incredible enthusiasm and inspiration for changing the world through conservation of resources and much more. These four students volunteer upwards of 160 hours of time every year in service to the conservation of resources in Boulder County.

It is not easy to be a peer leader at any age. In particular in high school it is a daring and daunting task to stand up in front of a group friends and speak for what you care about. Even more so it is difficult to motivate other students and to help them stay on task. As these students have come into their own as leaders the ETF has run more efficiently.

In addition to their leadership positions, a few of their specific successes are listed below:

Kelly Percy has been a Public Relations Officer extraordinaire. She is a logistical master and speaks passionately about upcoming projects and environmental issues at weekly all-school assemblies. She helped design and screen print t-shirts for the group bearing the ETF student-designed logo. She writes weekly announcements in the school newspaper and manages the ETF bulletin board. She has also been a dedicated part of the Transportation Transformation Team, ETF’s program that rewards students for using alternative transportation to arrive at school.

Kelly Muller is our ACE Coordinator. In this role she reports all of our completed projects to ACE using an online form. She is often the voice at weekly meetings: writing the agenda, getting people’s attention and helping her peers (and sometimes her teachers) stay on task. This fall she planned and ran a Fall Retreat for 20 students in the mountains. She has also volunteered countless hours in the school’s garden, which is designed as both a place for students to experiment with growing their own food and a pollinator habitat.

Malcolm Marshall is the student behind the often repeated and incredibly popular “Bring Your Own Mug Day.” At this event students at school are offered free coffee and tea if they bring their own mug. Malcolm solicits donations, coordinates servers for the event, picks up the beverages and posts informational signs about the 63 million to go cups trashed daily in the U.S. alone. He has also been a co-leader in our Local Lunch event.

Aleyna Porreca has taken the lead on one of the biggest most complicated projects the ETF has done three years running. This year ETF will be hosting our third annual “All Local Lunch” for the students and staff of New Vista. This event involves hours of phone calling and emails to request food donations, menu planning, donation pick ups, schedule coordination, not to mention prepping and cooking food for 200+ people. Every year Aleyna has grown in her capacity as a leader of this project. In addition Aleyna has become an accomplished student leader on wilderness trips through the Cottonwood Institute. She believes that one of the most important parts of inspiring environmental citizenry is connecting students with nature.

There is no doubt that these students deserve high honors and recognition for the work they have done and will continue to do in service to the conservation of resources in Boulder County and beyond.

Here’s to BOSH – While you are already winners, may this prestigious award go to you!  You deserve it!

Written by Paige Doughty and edited by April Pishna.