Support Climate Action Day Events and Climate Optimism

Funded Nov 5, 2024

Columbia Secondary School's Green Team truly appreciated the Donor's Choose grant from Google. Without it we could not have kicked off our first Climate Action Day in November and the supplies are also being used to celebrate three more Climate Action during the 2024-25 school year.

New York City Public Schools started the initiative to hold four climate action days last year as part of our mayor's PlaNYC and goals to increase education about climate change while providing actionable steps to reduce schools and individual carbon footprints. I am the sustainability coordinator at our 6-12 school and when I convened the Green Team to brainstorm ideas for how to motivate staff to actively participate and encourage their students to participate, a green team member suggested incentivizing the request. We came up with the idea of creating goodie bags with a personal note with an ask for teachers to review waste sorting and recycling habits and to encourage them in the classroom. We determined that this would also not only encourage education about reducing one's carbon footprint, but also serve as a way to build community at the school and a positive connection to the Green Team. The only issue was that we were short on funding. At the same time, an assistant principal had notified us of Google's Donor's choose grant.

Being awarded the grant and the fast turnaround time to fulfillment, allowed us to rapidly create goodie bags using the bags, pencils made from recycled materials, and candy that we ordered. The bags were a hit and teachers thanked Green Team members who delivered them as a sweet surprise and incentive to celebrate the waste themed Climate Action Day. Putting the bags together and delivering them to teachers also proved community building for Green Team members and students had a lot of fun in the process of assembling the bags. We used the bags again in February for our second Climate Action Day, themed around energy, and will have enough to continue with this effort of incentivizing and reminding teachers of the day by handing out goodie bags for the April and May days forthcoming. We also plan to make a banner using the paint and paintbrushes for the April climate action day that has a theme of Health, Wellness, and Green space. We appreciate those supplies which will be used in the next few weeks.

The entire project has taught students that local level education and small steps can make a difference on the city, state, and global levels to address the challenges of climate change. In a day and age when doom scrolling can lead to immobilizing fear and questioning what one can do to effect change, the grant helped students tangibly learn they can take direct action and in the process strengthen the sense of community and togetherness needed to tackle such a pressing problem.

We sincerely thank you for this funding.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Tiede