For an assignment in their Sustainability class, juniors Bridget Williams and Ella Fesler were required to complete a small set of challenges from the Project Green Challenge (PGC), which is a national project founded by the environmental non-for-profit organization Turning Green.
The PGC aims to inspire high school and college students to take action in their communities to help improve environmental quality by educating others. The challenge includes completing 30 daily activities within the month of October, and submitting a final video that discusses what the students learned over the course of the activities. There are three levels of the challenge: “green”, “greener”, and “greenest”, which get progressively more difficult as the month continues.
The class only required that they complete five to six challenges, but Fesler and Williams quickly found that they enjoyed completing the daily challenges, and decided to complete the entire project and submit their video. “We realized that we liked doing [the challenges], and we liked how impactful and interesting [they were]” said Williams. To their surprise, the pair received an email on November first informing them that they had been selected as finalists in the competition.
Fesler and Williams began to communicate with Turning Green via email, which fully sponsored Williams to travel to San Francisco, California from November 15-19. In San Francisco, Williams participated in many environmentally-focused activities, attended lectures, and created a plan to continue her project. The finalists additionally toured an organic farm, visited an organic grocery store, and learned about sustainable practices. “One day was devoted to hearing speakers from different sustainable companies,” said Williams. “[We listened to] CEOs of large corporations which are centered on the environment, like Nutiva [an essential oil company] and Acure [a cosmetics company].”
On the final day of the conference, Williams presented the project and spoke about PGC’s effects on her daily life and her view of the environment. Then, she worked with the other finalists to create their own organization called CommuniCan. “CommuniCan is similar to PGC in that we want to inspire people to take action in their own communities,” said Williams. Like PCG, the organization involves monthly themes and challenges which are focused on educating others about their impact on the environment. “We want to help people who are like minded to share what they’ll do and what they’ve already done to help the environment,” said Williams. Although CommuniCan is still in its infant stages, both Williams and Fesler hope to continue to build it, and hopefully establish chapters in schools around the nation.
Because they were finalists this year, Williams and Fesler can no longer compete to be finalists in the PGC. However, they can be ambassadors for Turning Green next school year, and both of them plan on doing so. “We also want to intern for [Turning Green] next year” said Fesler.
Competing in PGC has made Williams and Fesler more aware of the small actions everyone does that contributes to environmental welfare. “For me, learning all these new things about sustainability and talking with others has given me inspiration to do a lot more [activism in terms of the environment]” said Williams.