Water Campaign Friendships

Two years ago, Aquatic Society of Omaha from Nebraska and St. Roza from Uganda joined our 2017 Water Campaign. These two teams met each other through the Campaign as partner teams and learned about methods to improve water quality and water conservation efforts. During the Campaign, the two teams communicated a common interest in water conservation, food security, and improving sustainable agricultural efforts. Since first meeting each other, Aquatic Society of Omaha and St. Roza have collaborated on several environmentally focused projects and have kept in contact in future Campaigns. We’re happy to see our Campaign teams get along so well!

Continued Collaboration

These veteran Grades of Green Campaign teams have continued to participate in environmental efforts together- most recently in the Pollination Project. Aquatic Society of Omaha and St. Roza are committed to learning about modern agricultural practices in order to improve agricultural efforts, learn about water dynamics in soil, and improve sustainable resource usage. Both Aquatic Society of Omaha and St. Roza are working to improve awareness and solutions for water issues by researching the impact of water scarcity and by working on food growing units. By improving food growing aspects in incremental steps, the teams are improving water and quality by incorporating water testing and soil testing kits into food growing units while taking action on other agricultural measure. Other innovations include adding nets to the bottom of food growing units to prevent pests from attacking food roots and adding enriched soils to these kits.

Join the Water Campaign!

Want to join teams like Aquatic Society of Omaha and St. Roza in fighting water issues around the world? Feel free to join us in our next Water Campaign here!

Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a great partner team to collaborate too!

Grades of Green was featured in South Bay Magazine!

The Southern Californian magazine highlighted Grades of Green student efforts in communities, local governments, and beyond. Co-Executive Directors, Allie and Emily go on to talk about how Grades of green started and how much the programs have expanded. In the article, Allie mentions Grades of Green’s humble beginnings, stating:

“[Grades of Green] was an idea from a group of passionate parents who really wanted to work with their young children and the peers of their children to help them learn some environmental habits they could carry with them for a long time,” says Allie. “It started off with the idea of engaging students in simple habits like turning off the water when brushing your teeth or using both sides of paper before recycling it. It evolved from students not only wanting to practice those habits but also lead environmental projects and activities in their communities.”

Click here to read the rest!

Different Water Issues Requires Diverse Solutions

Water issues can come in different shapes and sizes around the world. In Grades of Green’s Water Campaign, students have the freedom to choose which issues that they want to address and tackle.

As a result, students around the world have been tackling an assortment of water issues in their own way!

Bottega Delle Arti Creative in Rome is a dance school that is addressing Rome’s serious water infrastructure issues. Rome is currently one of the largest water leaking cities in the entire world due to their aging piping infrastructure and lack of funds to address this issue. Through dance, the school is not only bringing awareness if this issue to citizens in Rome, but also to an international audience through online videos and seminars with guests hailing from around the world.

Unity Charter School in Morristown, New Jersey had a huge team of environmentalists this year. They decided to tackle all kinds of water issues based on their students’ interest. One of their students wanted to tackle the water quality issues affecting their beautiful beach. He planned to host communal cleanups along the beach to help his community not only appreciate the beauty of the nature but also respect it by encouraging event-goers to keep the beach beautiful by picking up litter.

St. Roza in Kampala, Uganda has been trying to conserve as much water as possible due to their area’s lack of water infrastructure and their inconsistent rainy and dry seasons. In addition to their newly built well, St. Roza is relying on a series of rain barrels to increase their water conservation efforts to prepare them for the upcoming dry season.

None of this would be possible without the generous help from our sponsors:

– The Boeing Company

– Sanitation District of Los Angeles County

– Long Beach Water Department

– Northrop Grumman

– LAcarGUY

– LA Kings Foundation

– Subaru Pacific

– County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl

– Carton Council

– Downtown Manhattan Beach Business & Professionals Association

– Johnson Ohana Foundation

– West Coast Event Productions

– Grand View PTA

– Optima Energy

– Continental Development

– Klean Kanteen

Follow us on Social Media and let us know YOUR favorite way to save water!

St. Roza and their Water Campaign

St. Roza, a veteran Grades of Green Team from Uganda and winner of the first Water Campaign, has joined us once again for this semester’s 2018 Water Campaign. The team has made incredible accomplishments in recent years. For the first Campaign, they have installed a water filtration system to maximize water efficiency for their garden. In addition, they used their well-earned prize money from the first Water Campaign to build a 40,000 liter well for their school and their community!

St. Roza’s Grades of Green Team has been looking into ways to solve their community’s water issues. In Uganda, 61% of Ugandans lack access to safe drink water. In addition, the nation’s tropical climate creates distinctive periods of rain and drought- known as wet and dry seasons. This can make water conservation and water quality efforts more difficult to manage. After building their 40,000 liter well, St. Roza has managed to address the water conservation portion and are looking into ways to keep their hard earned water in good quality. Without centralized water infrastructure, people in Uganda have to be creative and resourceful when it comes to safe drinking water.

Water Facts!

Let’s check out a few water facts to learn how to be resourceful with our own water!

1) The average global footprint for daily activities per person is about 3400 liters of water.

2) The average American diet alone uses up about 3785 liters of water a day.

3) Nearly 22% of indoor home water water use comes from doing laundry.

4) 80% of all diseases in developing nations are related to lack of safe water for drinking and sanitation.

5) Activated charcoal is an ingredient used in many water filters. It can absorb nutrients and other chemicals from water sources due to its extremely high surface area.

Do you have any water facts and tips? Share with us on Instagram @gradesofgreen

World Water Day!

March 22nd is World Water Day! As populations, economies, and productivity all expand throughout the world, it is important to learn about the water needed to fuel all these changes. Without enough water, electric generators cannot be cooled, agriculture for food and clothing cannot be grown, and hygiene standards would fall. Although water conservation is important around the world, some areas have different approaches to saving water given their climate and local environment.

Climates and Locations

Countries have differing climates and attributes depending on their location on the globe. Some nations have four distinct seasons while some countries near the equator have have dry and wet seasons. For countries with dry and wet seasons, water conservation is so important. Without proper planning, dry and wet season countries might not have enough quality water for crops, cooling electric plants, and for cleaning and drinking. Grades of Green provides a few ways for schools to save water, but one Grades of Green School went above and beyond.

What are some other solutions?

Well Makers for Wellbeing

St. Roza, a private school in Uganda, wanted to provide quality water for their community during the dry season. As winners of last year’s Water Challenge, they used their earned grant funding to create a well that can hold up to 40,000 liters of water. This well will be able to capture and save water from the rain abundant wet season and help throughout the dry season. St. Roza certainly earned their grant and are paying it forward!

Expanding the Solution

St. Roza also hope to use some of their collected water to create a water efficient fish farm with help from their friends in Nebraska! Fish takes far less water for the average home cook to cook with compared to some local favorites like ugali, yams, rice, and lentils. Moreover, dishes that take less water to use can reduce the chances of waterborne diseases from spreading, since they do not need as much time to boil. The Grades of Green Team at St. Roza hopes that their community can be less dependent on water during the dry season so that there is enough for agriculture, drinking, cleaning and for the good of their community and future generations.

Interested in saving water at your school? Register with Grades of Green here to get started!

Inspired by the blog post written by our L.A. intern Josh about air quality, our friends at St. Roza in Uganda reached out to us to share their own efforts to help with air quality!

Using designs from their fellow art students, the student eco-leaders at St. Roza have constructed an incinerator in order to reduce emissions produced from the burning of the waste they create. Before the students built their incinerator, some of their waste was burned in an open fire with no way to control the emissions created. This sent all sorts of toxins and pollutants into the atmosphere. These students are very concerned about the addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and its effects on global warming and rainfall, so using materials such as clay, sand, and stones, they took matters into their own hands and built an incinerator! They are always working to improve the quality of air and the environment however they can!

We are so happy to hear what these students are doing to reduce air pollution! Their eco-tip might even end up on a special Grades of Green reusable napkin made by our friends at Funkins! Did you submit your eco-tip for our custom napkin contest with Funkins? If so, be on the lookout for an email from us announcing the winners on March 25th!

Interested in spreading the word about protecting air quality or reducing air pollution? Register here to gain access to our 40+ Eco-Activities like our Air Earth Tips Activity!

Here at Grades of Green, we’re very grateful for technology, like Skype, that allows us to communicate with schools all around the world. Yesterday, we spoke with Agnes … she was calling us all the way from UGANDA! Agnes is wonderfully passionate about conservation, and her desire to pass that along to students is motivational. She works with students at St. Roza College Mattuga, a mixed day and boarding school with about 300 students. The school is located in Kilwanila of the Mattuga-Wakiso district in Uganda.

Know people who want to inspire and lead change (doesn’t matter how young or young-at-heart they are)? Help us spread the word about Grades of Green! We love hearing about all the different ways people hear about us; whether by word-of-mouth, social media, the local news, etc., it warms our hearts that someone took the moment to share our cause.

Registering for Grades of Green (which you can do here) means you get access to 40+ environmental activities with fun implementation steps and FREE downloadable resources. A great bonus is your school is paired with a one-on-one staff advisor to support you all along the way.