Author: Katie Teshima

Matungu Community Development Charity
Nairobi, Kenya

Team MCDC was a wonderful team to work with during the Climate Solutions Campaign. They are a group of four motivated girls who are passionate about solving the climate crisis in their community and ended up inspiring their community to plant more than 3,500 tree saplings! From the start, they were committed to the campaign and it showed in their organization, coordination, and overall success of their project. They had clear goals on how to help their community and executed their project exceptionally well. 

The STEAM Express Team from Gardena High School
Gardena, CA

While researching the global climate impact of waste, the STEAM Express team from Gardena High School was very concerned about the environmental cost of fast fashion and textile waste. What really struck them was that 84% of donated clothes still end up going to the landfill. To do something about it, the STEAM Express team worked with local organizations like LAcarGUY and BizHaus, a co-working space where Grades of Green has an office, to collect old clothes. These caring students decided to turn the clothes they collected into blankets to be donated to local homeless shelters. For their dedication to the environment and to people in need, the students were chosen by the South Bay Rotary Club to receive a special Eco-Grant!

The Mary Bragg Green Team at Mary Bragg Elementary School
Cerritos, CA

Mary Bragg went above and beyond. The team is enormous (over 50 kids) so they split into 3 groups. Each group voted on a group leader and held a weekly meeting where they set an agenda and met their goals. These 5th and 6th graders picked trees for their topic and decided to have each group focus on a different solution. Group one focused on increasing urban tree cover, group two focused on protecting tropical forests, and group three focused on reducing the heat island effect.

The “For the Greener Good” Team at Mira Costa High School
Manhattan Beach, CA

This team is 100% student-led with very little to no adult support. Sam Torres, a Junior, is the leader of the team and organizes everything from the meetings to the project and outreach. This team of about 40 students was very successful in inspiring their community to eat less meat and go meatless on Mondays. They garnered support from local businesses and engaging their audience to participate in their online challenge.

The Ecology & Wildlife Club at Whitney High School
Cerritos, CA

The dedicated Ecology and Wildlife Club at Whitney High School hosted a community tree sale to offset their school’s paper usage and surpassed their goal by distributing more than 120 trees. This team is very student-led with minimal adult support. They are extremely passionate, organized, and driven and worked very hard on their social media videos and infographics.

The Keller Greenies at Helen Keller Middle School
Long Beach, CA

This team is exemplary! The students from Helen Keller Middle School teamed up with fellow Long Beach students to advocate for the commitment of the Long Beach Unified School District to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030.  They are very capable and continually show that they’ll one day be future world leaders.

The Redondo Reducers at Redondo Union High School
Redondo Beach, CA

The Redondo Reducers Club, led by long-time Grades of Green Eco-Leader, Rylee, hosted a Plastic Pollution Solutions Panel featuring state and local leaders that
dove deep into the most pressing issues around plastic pollution. Rylee worked very hard to pull together this panel which required her to coordinate with numerous community leaders to make it such a success.

Adams High School & Farmington High School
Rochester Hills, MI & Farmington, MI

Students from Adams and Farmington Hills High Schools collaborated on a project to get their schools to ban styrofoam lunch trays and replace them with sustainable alternatives. These teams really put in the time and effort to work as a collective unit to try and get styrofoam banned in their cafeterias! You could tell that they were extremely organized and were always available to move their project forward.

Weston High School
Weston, MA

The team from Weston High School, led by Max, collected more than 500 pounds of plastic bags from his community to repurpose into a public bench. Max worked to coordinate with many leaders in his community and they all responded positively. He is looking for a longer-term solution to the problem of plastic waste and plans to use his Eco-Grant to help fund a bailer for his local waste transfer station. He always managed to come through and get the work done!

The “To Environment, With Love” Team at the Modern High School for Girls
Kolkata, India

These girls are on a mission! Two high schoolers started an organization called “To Environment, With Love” in their community before participating in the Campaign. They called family friends, knocked on neighbors’ doors, made phone calls and started an Instagram page to start collecting recyclables such as e-waste, paper waste, and items that could be donated or upcycled. Although they started the campaign with an existing project, they were able to build on it significantly this school year. Not only did they expand their collection in their community, but they were also able to reach other high school students all over the world to start chapters in other cities. They now mentor those students to do the same thing they’re doing in their community.

The Kishoka Youth Organization
Mombasa, Kenya

The students from the Kishoka Youth Organization hosted a bike ride event in their community where they planted 100 mangrove seedlings, in addition to conducting litter pick-ups, presenting at seminars and educating younger students on the importance of mangroves. The Kishoka Youth Organization is led by a very energetic and dedicated director who keeps his students active non-stop. He’s committed to empowering his students and wants them to learn and get involved in making environmental improvements. The team of kids made a ton of impact this year!

Best Student Innovator

Adriel Mar at Culver City Middle School
Culver City, CA

Adriel chose a difficult advocacy project – he created a food waste certification system for local businesses – with the potential to make a major impact on food waste in the future. Because of the scope of his Campaign, he is still early in the process, but he continues to be committed to his project and has laid significant groundwork for his goals.

Most Enthusiastic Team

The “Mission Unsoakable” Team at Rogers Middle School
Long Beach, CA

Mission Unsoakable checked every educational goal in the RISE campaign outline. They used all their guidebook materials, learned a TON about project management, used every resource available, and made terrific use of their Ask the Expert meeting. They were truly the most enthusiastic team and showed so much dedication to their project!

Best Team Name

The “Jeez We Like Trees” Team at Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School 74
Queens, NY

What a great team name from Nathanial Hawthorne! This team was heavily student-led, holding their own virtual meetings and organizing their ideas and thoughts. This creative and fun team had an awesome project: they planted trees outside their school to filter polluted air from the nearby docks.

Best Alumni Team

The HEAR Club from the California Academy of Mathematics and Science
Carson, CA

What a high effort, high-functioning team! The HEAR Club has always been an awesome team to work with. This year, the team focused on fighting fashion waste by repurposing used clothes into 150+ dog toys for Gone to the Dogs Rescue. They partnered with long-time Grades of Green supporter, Subaru Pacific, to collect donated clothes and made a lot of dogs very happy!

Best Elementary School Team Facilitator

Roberto Escala at Goethe International Charter School
Los Angeles, CA

Best Middle or High School Team Facilitator

Jean Posada at Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School 74
Queens, NY

Help fight climate change by planting trees for Earth Month. The MBMS Grades of Green team is fundraising to reforest areas of California affected by wildfire and drought. Each dollar donated to our One Tree Planted fundraiser will plant 1 tree in California. Watch the video below to see why trees are so important in protecting our planet and fighting climate change and then click here to donate to their fundraiser.

Anyone who donates $5 or more can fill out this form to be entered into a raffle to win gift certificates to Deep Roots Garden Center and International Garden Center.

High school junior and Grades of Green veteran, Sam Torres, has partnered with Southern California small businesses to encourage more planet-friendly diets through her Grades of Green Club’s #MeatlessMonday campaign. Members of the public who post pictures of their plant-based meals are entered into a giveaway featuring gift cards and items from a new business every Monday. The campaign ends April 25th, so don’t miss your chance to green your diet and enter to win some awesome prizes!

Rylee Goldfarb, a 10th-grade student from Redondo Beach is passionate about creating a healthier world and is partnering with the creators of The Story of Plastic for the Redondo Reducers Club’s Reduce Your Use Campaign. The panel discussion will dive deep into the most pressing issues around plastic pollution and reflect on the themes of the award-winning documentary.

About The Story of Plastic: The Story of Plastic is a searing expose revealing the ugly truth behind plastic pollution and the false solution of plastic recycling. From the extraction of fossil fuels and plastic disposal to the global resistance fighting back, The Story of Plastic is a life-changing film depicting one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. Watch The Story of Plastic trailer!

Register for our panel discussion and get the opportunity to see this groundbreaking documentary for free!

In his role as the Deputy Chief of Staff, Samuel serves as a strategic senior advisor to Senator Allen and oversees the operations of the District office. Prior to that, Samuel ran Senator Allen’s successful campaign for State Senate in 2014 and most recently ran the successful Senate campaign for State Senator-elect Henry Stern.
He brings prior experience working in the State Legislature for then Assemblymember Ted Lieu and has also worked for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Alliance for Children’s Rights as well as the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence. He is an alumnus of the New Leader’s Council fellowship program and served on the board of the Asian Professional Exchange and the Asian Pacific American Legislative Staff Network in leadership positions.
Samuel has a Juris Doctorate degree from Loyola Law School and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Anika has been studying and educating about the plastics issue since 2010. Her academic background is in the Earth Sciences.  During her undergrad at Jacobs University Bremen she studied how microplastics move underwater, and she later completed a Masters in Geology at the University of Western Ontario studying microplastics in the sediments of Lake Ontario. Since then, she’s been developing educational content around the complexities of the plastics issue at the non-profit Algalita to empower and prepare young people to take action on this issue.

For the past decade, Allie has worked with environmental nonprofits to cultivate behavior changes to protect our planet. Currently, Allie is the Director of Impact and Sustainability at human-I-T, a nonprofit that takes technology that would normally be recycled or sent to a landfill and refurbished it to redistribute to low-income families. Previously, she served as the Recycling Center Coordinator at California State University, Long Beach, where she oversaw the recycling center, as well as the Co-Executive Director at Grades of Green, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring kids to care for the earth.