11 Young Eco-Warriors Recognized for Remarkable Global Conservation Achievements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

11 YOUNG ECO-WARRIORS RECOGNIZED FOR REMARKABLE GLOBAL CONSERVATION ACHIEVEMENTS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, July 10, 2008 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- From California to Kenya, eleven young people have decided that the future of the earth just can’t wait until later. Whether it’s global warming or mountains of electronic waste in our landfills or air pollution from idling school buses, the eleven extraordinary 2008 winners of Action For Nature’s International Young Eco-Hero Awards are tackling some of the globe’s most urgent problems with kid power.

Every year since 2003, Action For Nature (AFN), a U.S.-based non-profit, has recognized young people ages 8-16 who are taking important steps to solve tough environmental problems. Youth from countries around the world send in their stories and explain their work. A panel of judges including experts in environmental science, biology and education determines the year’s winners. Each receives a cash prize, a certificate and other benefits.

Global warming was much on the minds of the youngest winners of this year’s award. The top three 11-13 year old honorees were clearly impressed with Al Gore’s award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and were inspired to take immediate action after seeing it:

11-year-old Colin Carlson from Coventry, Connecticut won a place on the first National Geographic kids’ expedition team and got a chance to travel to the Galapagos Islands. He was more than a little shocked when the group went to see the islands’ famed penguins and found only five of these special birds – a species, he learned, that is declining due to climate change. After seeing Al Gore’s film, Colin decided it was time to “think globally and act locally” and formed the Cool Coventry Club, a multi-pronged project to educate people in his community about global warming and to encourage energy conservation. Colin’s task wasn’t easy. The small town of Coventry was historically hostile to environmentalists and many residents didn’t believe in global warming. But that didn’t stop Colin. He was out to prove that caring for the planet could be “cool.” He created a website, began to network with environmental groups and enlisted experts to make presentations at local churches and libraries. He now makes presentations in schools and is currently working with the Girl Scouts to plan more outreach in his region. His lobbying efforts with the local town council eventually led to the adoption of a “SmartPower” resolution, and he has convinced many local businesses to sell and promote energy efficient light bulbs.

Another 11-year-old, Nathan Moos of Sandy, Utah began to understand how the environmental problems cited in Al Gore’s film, like car exhaust and air pollution, were having an impact on human health when his friend Brett developed asthma. He came up with an innovative way to protect the health of his fellow students by getting parents and bus drivers to stop idling their car engines while they were waiting in the school pick-up lane. He enlisted the help of eighteen other 6th-graders, who printed up signs educating parents about the harmful effects of particulate matter in the air and then stationed themselves along the line of cars at the end of the school day. Their daily presence attracted lots of media attention, and soon the engines began to turn off. Nathan is also working with state officials and district transportation officials to adopt bus idling restrictions.

After watching “An Inconvenient Truth” two times right in a row, 13-year-old Alec Loorz of Ventura, California was so impressed with what he’d seen, he talked about it with all of his friends the next day at school. To his surprise, one of his best friends denied that global warming was real. That’s when Alec realized that he couldn’t wait to be old enough to be trained to give Gore’s presentation – he needed to do something immediately that reached kids like his buddy. Alec developed a website and a presentation that he began to give at schools. He organized local young people into twenty Kids-vs-Global-Warming action teams who made pledges to green their schools and get involved in local environmental projects. He’s also working with local officials on a public awareness project he developed entitled SLAP (the Sea Level Awareness Project). Alec and a team of young people are designing 100 poles that will be installed around the city to show residents how far underwater their neighborhoods will be if Greenland melts in this century.

The three top honorees in the 14-16 year old category are thinking locally AND globally, taking on issues in their communities and creating connections abroad:

16-year-old Linus Wafula of Nairobi, Kenya can’t afford to go to school, but that hasn’t stopped him from going to the library where he researches environmental issues and thinks about ways to address them, particularly those related to life in the vast city slum where he lives with his single mother. Linus is especially concerned with the impact of uncollected waste on the health of his neighborhood. He knows that he, his family and his friends in the slum are always in danger of outbreaks of water-based diseases like cholera and typhoid. So, Linus started the Mazingara Safi Campaign, a volunteer youth club that collects waste from local households, removing garbage heaps and dumpsites near homes and draining stagnant water that might breed mosquitoes. The club provides residents with garbage bags and educates them about the importance of getting involved in local clean up efforts. They’ve also started a tree planting campaign to beautify the area.

14-year-old Alexander Lin of Westerly, Rhode Island is also thinking about waste, e-waste to be exact. Alex learned the dirty facts behind the technology boom and understood that the time to act was now before too many consumer electronics ended up in the landfill and the heavy metals in them had irreversibly poisoned groundwater. He founded the Westerly Innovations Network to increase e-waste awareness, set up systems for recycling and reusing computers, and promote legislature to ban the dumping of e-waste. Alex and his team of fellow students have directed hundreds of unused computers to needy families in their community as well as to Sri Lanka, Mexico, Cameroon and Nigeria. Alex is working with partners in Africa to set up Internet cafes and computer centers there and is lobbying to build state of the art e-waste recycling facilities in those countries to handle the massive amount of e-waste that is exported there.

16-year-old Andrew Leonard of Redwood City, California is also thinking across borders. Although a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Andrew travels every year to visit family in Beijing, China. Three years ago, he noticed just how bad the pollution was getting in China’s premier city. Thick smog covered it at all times. He knew that China, until recently, was entirely focused on the pressing need for economic development, but felt that the country was ready to begin embracing environmentalism. He also sensed that Americans were increasingly developing negative impressions of China and he wanted to tackle that as well. He applied for and received a grant from the Disney corporation to establish the Global Partners: China–USA project, the joint ecological partnership between schools in Beijing and America. He enlisted a childhood friend in Beijing to help, and the two overcame frustrating communications challenges designed to limit Chinese contact with the West and set up a simultaneous Global Youth Service Day. On that day, children on both sides of the globe worked on an environmental project, videotaped themselves and then watched each other’s videos during a day of celebration and cross cultural understanding. Andrew visited Beijing to present a proclamation from U.S. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo honoring the pilot Chinese partner school and to speak with interested principals there about joining the project. Andrew is proud of all of the young people involved for breaking through years of international suspicion to work on a shared problem. He says, “We’re a new generation that is breaking away from the old, a generation with hope.”

Action For Nature is an environmental, education and advocacy non-profit that encourages young people to take personal action to nurture and protect a healthy environment on which all life depends.

Applications and guidelines for the 2009 award are available from August 2008 through January 2009. Deadline for entry is February 28, 2009. For more information, visit www.actionfornature.org.

Action For Nature, 2008 International Young Eco-Heroes

Age Category 8 to 13

Colin Carlson, First Place, Age 11, Coventry, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Educates others in his town about global warming, encouraging conservation at individual, business and governmental levels.

Nathan Moos, Second Place, Age 11, Sandy, Utah, U.S.A.
Campaigns for “No Idling” at his school where parents come to pick up students; lobbies for state legislation to stop school bus idling.

Alec Loors, Third Place, Age 13, Ventura, California, U.S.A.
Educates youth on the science of global warming; started SLAP (Sea Level Awareness Project) to awaken his city to the threat of rising sea levels.

Ben Workinger, Honorable Mention, Age 8, Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Started a way station for Monarch Butterflies at his school.

Age category 14 to 16

Linus Wafula, First Place, Age 16, Nairobi, Kenya
Mobilizing his community to maintain a clean and healthy environment through collecting and disposing of waste products, and advocating tree planting and health environment management education.

Alex Lin, First Place, Age 14, Westerly, Rhode Island, U.S.A.
Started a project dedicated to creating a sustainable e-waste management system; raising public awareness and lobbying for legislation to stop the future improper disposal of e-waste.

Andrew Leonard, Second Place, Age 16, Redwood City, CA, U.S.A.
Created a joint ecological project between a Beijing school and an American school – creating a new partnership way of thinking about ecological problems.

Vania Santosa, Second Place, East Java, Indonesia
Cooperated with government and other high level officials in the organizing of seminars and workshops to educate people about prolonged home waste management and recycling, with a goal of becoming a national movement.

Steven Muganzi, Third Place, Age 15, Kampala, Uganda
Conducted a public awareness campaign on rain water harvesting; persuaded 30 of fifty homes in his village to install rain water harvesting systems.

Dulanjana Wathsaridu Karunarathna, Honorable Mention, Age 15, Welimada, Sri Lanka
Organizing a community campaign to promote organic agriculture by utilizing locally available traditional methods and eliminating pesticides.

Tehreem Rehman, Honorable Mention, Age 16, Huntington, New York, U.S.A.
Educating others about the prevalence of environmental toxins and how these contribute to increasing health issues, such as cancer.

Contact: Hoi Poon, 415-235-5249, Hoi@poonassociates.com