Redesigning Our Future

Green Inkers Arrive at the Summit and Get Ready to Get to Work By Cyndi Allison Wittum (focus group leader) The first night at the "Redesigning the Future: Environmental Summit for High School Students 2012" campers began arriving at Catawba College. Here are the "Green Ink: Blogging for a Better Tomorrow" group. They had opted to spend the week covering the news all across the summit. I have called my group the Green Inkers. They look a tad nervous on this first night, but it did not take them long to get in the swing on things. In fact, I am absolutely amazed at the terrific content they have produced (working together) in just a couple of days. Only one student had blogged previously. By the second full day of the summit, the Green Inkers looked like a professional news room crew. They were coming up with their own ideas, gathering information during the short breaks between sessions, and they had articles up and ready for review before the sun s...

Having a Blast at the Environmental Center Summit Hosted at Catawba College It's been a busy week for sure at "Redesigning Our Future" (a camp for high school students) with an environmentalism theme. We hit breakfast at 7:30 a.m., and the lights aren't out until long after sunset. But, we've had a great time and learned a lot. Catching Our Breath for Just a Minute These young ladies take a quick break before heading off to a focus group which range from dance and blogging to economics and sacred spaces. We asked a random group of students waiting out on the brick yard what they considered one highlight to date at the summit. My Favorite Part About the Summit So Far . . . Robert (Virginia) - "Kayaking on the reserve was a lot of fun." Chas (Virginia) - "I loved dominating the Ecolympics with my team :-)" Savannah (North Carolina) - "Learned lots of awesome things and made a lot of awesome friends." Ce...

Natasha Abalagan Governments Must Look at Environmental Issues and Make Better Decisions   By Natasha Anbalagan Its the government’s responsibility to protect the rights of all people. And as such, it's their duty to protect the environment for future generations. In “ The Price of Everything “ focus group at the Redesigning Our Future Summit, we learned how government can protect the environment. One of the tools that government has to do this with is regulation. There are two types of regulation that government can take advantage of: direct and market based. Direct regulation would involve restricting certain things like products or techniques. Market based regulation would involve measuring the costs of the unmeasurable. Market based regulation tends to be less forceful than direct. I also think its more interesting to look at. A particularly interesting type of market based regulation is subsidy reduction. Our government subsidizes oil by spending $10 bil...

How to Drink the Environmentally Friendly Way By Emily Pieper On the first day we arrived here at Redesigning 2012 , each of us received a plastic cup (seen in the center of the photo above) to use throughout the week. What's neat about these cups is that they are reusable, and they can hold any kind of drink. This was a great idea, because every hour in America approximately 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away! Not only do these nifty cups help us stay hydrated throughout the day, but they allow us to be environmentally friendly in the process. The insulated, reusable drinking cups were donated for the "Redesigning the Future" summit for high school students by Rowan Regional Medical Center .

Camper Spotlight: Natasha of High Point, NC By Emma Sophia Natasha, who is now living in High Point, North Carolina, has passion for many things. Specifically: cupcakes and the environment. Right now, the environmental issue that she is most focused on is hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) is a process in which people drill far down into rock layers to extract natural gas. Many people are against it because it uses questionable chemicals and techniques throughout the fracking process. Natasha attended a local hearing about fracking that was held at East Chapel Hill High and has raised awareness for it in many ways. The things she has done to raise awareness include: working with a teacher to give extra credit to other students who attended the public hearing on hydraulic fracturing and writing blog-posts about why she believes that fracking is wrong. The Orange Bedazzle cupcake that won 3rd place  at the Horace Williams Cupcake Festival....

We Use Our Differences for a Common Goal at the Environmental Summit By Jocelyn  Each student at the Summit has a unique personality and ways we contribute that were considered when choosing what kind of group we wanted to be participating in before coming here. (Students were able to pick their groups.) The group I chose was "Green Ink: Blogging for a Better Tomorrow," because I enjoy using technology to get information out to the people, and I'm really good at working with computers. Not everyone  is the same, because if that were the case, then everything would be boring. Always. Being together to accomplish something will be better than going solo (when we all bring our own special talents to the table). Here are some of the various groups from the Redesigning the Earth Summit 2012. This group is outside gathering materials for an experiment. Another focus group is doing lab work. My blogging group is gathering ide...

Eco-Tip : Consider Buying Carbon Offsets By Shaina Robinson As the end of this  summit  is rapidly approaching, traveling and transportation are some thoughts that are on  on our  minds. For many of us, airplanes were involved in our journey to this The National Environmental Summit. It's also the type of transportation that many of us will take to get to other destinations throughout the summer.  Traveling to new places is great, but over the years the amount of carbon  dioxide  emissions coming from airplanes has steadily been growing, and  as of right now there is no technological fix that could lower them enough to make much of a difference.   This is where carbon offsets come in. The concept behind carbon offsets is that you're more or less making a trade.   As an airline passenger you might be given the option to pay anywhere from $5 to $40 to offset your flight. The price is determined by how far of a dista...

Communicating Your Initiative: Workshop by Amanda Lanier   By Emily Pieper Y esterday w hile I listened to Amanda Lanier teach us about effective environmental communication, another light bulb lit up in my brain when she showed the slide pictured below. Instead of just interpreting the word "resolution" as the ending or solving of a problem, I found myself looking at it in a whole new way. To me the word suddenly looked like "re-solution". Photo By: Emily Pieper <> N ow, maybe this doesn't seem like that big of a change, so let me explain my crazy thought. What I started to think was that "resolution" could also mean to come up with different ways to "re-solve" a problem. S o, why does this matter and why should you still read this? W hat Amanda explained to us was that today in the 21st century, thanks to new technologies that develop every day, we have thousands of ways to communicate our ideas. Right now as you ...

Anna Harrison Anna Harrison - Making a Difference During a break between focus group and workshop time, Anna took a few minutes to describe an ongoing project she has already been working on back home.  Collecting 800 clear 2-liter bottles, some old tires, used corrogated plastic, donated rain barrel and worm bin, Anna is creating a greenhouse on school property for use by the after school program and third grade plant science class.  She is likely to far exceed the 80-hour requirement for her Girl Scout Gold Award.  Inspired by a chair and stand created from GS cookie boxes at her local GS headquarters, she researched other conservation projects online and discovered the work of Blue Rock Station, an organization with booklet instructions for creating greenhouses from used materials.  Be sure to check out Anna's blog for photographs and more information about her unique environmental project.

By: Keela Sweeney The "Ecolympics"were a huge success for everyone! Students completed in activities ranging from newspaper towers to marshmallow tosses and even a counselor event!  Students building towers out of recycled newspaper Our winning tower! Congratulations everyone! These ladies are sporting newspaper headbands. Is this Vogue's next cover photo? I think yes! On your mark, get set, catch a marshmallow in your mouth! Christian and Robert showing some superior team spirit! Photos By: Jessica Everett & Keela Sweeney