Twenty young people from the 49/63 Neighborhood will be chosen to participate Saturday mornings. The group will do various projects designed to make the neighborhood a more sustainable place to live. At the end of the year long program the participants will create a show and displays that will be featured in a traveling Earth Day celebration. The Celebration will be repeated twelve times for small groups of blocks within the neighborhood, bringing neighbors together to learn money and energy saving tips from the kids.
The participating ten to fifteen year olds will learn a variety of practical skills and ways to communicate them. They will learn how to make a house warmer in the winter, saving money and will learn how to tell others in rap or song or though their art. They will learn how to grow food and be able to show others how through video and a web site. They will learn how individuals grow toward caring community and will know how to bring people together to learn and celebrate.
We will take field trips and host visiting experts in many fields of study from architecture to agriculture, from cyber space to a sense of place, from plant and animal communities to neighborhood unity.
The EcoKids will receive a financial stipend for attendance and for putting on the Earth Day celebrations. They will learn and be encouraged to take their new found skills and turn them into ways to earn money. And having received so much the EcoKids will learn how to enjoy giving service to others. EcoKids will be able to help with home and yard tasks.
Although there will be work a sense of play will be found in all the tasks. Through the program the kids will become a team doing important work preparing for the future. In a time when many are ignoring environmental and neighborhood problems we will be meeting them head on in our own homes and blocks. EcoKids will learn organizational, leadership, communications and community building skills that they can learn no where else. This is the only place in the country that we know of that is attempting such a program.
Rockhurst education students and staff will be working with the EcoKids to develop a model that other neighborhoods will be able to use in developing similar programs. Students in a class in the fall and another in the spring will work along with our EcoKids helping them and noting what works. The results will be put on the All Species web site for public viewing.
This program is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has awarded a grant to Heartland All Species Project for a year long action learning program.
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