The students in the Fall 2018 CAP class at Centaurus High School had some specific requirements for our action project. The project had to be hands on and something we can actually use. It didn’t so much matter to us which environmental issues we were solving, as long as we were helping in some way, no matter how small. We looked at our strengths and our passions and in the Venn Diagram intersection of the two, we found our action project: Engineering for the Planet.

Several members of our class are also engineering students. And the students who weren’t taking engineering classes all really like to make things with their hands and create new stuff. Our first project idea combined our participation in school sports and activities with a desire to save water and promote reusable water bottles. This multi-port water spigot was the result after several trips to ReSource and the local hardware stores. It will hydrate an estimated 500+ students each year during their after school activities and save the team managers having to fill giant water coolers and haul them to the field only to dump them out again after practice!

Our last project combined our love of the outdoors, dislike for carrying heavy gear, and desire to avoid wasteful stove fuel in non-recyclable canisters. The result was building these ultralight alcohol burning stoves out of repurposed materials. Then we engineered pot racks and wind screens to further increase the fuel efficiency of our stoves.

Our next project was to learn how to create rain barrels. We found barrels and then taught each other how to put the spigots and overflows in them.  Our idea was to sell them, but we didn’t quite get that far. Oh well. Now everyone in the class knows how to make a rain barrel for their own homes and has experience actually making them.

Written by CAP Instructor Erin Angel

See more class and project photos here!

The Community Adventure Program at Centaurus High School is made possible in part by a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) through the Nature Kids/Jovenes de la Naturalez program. Click here to learn more!