Redesigning Our Future

Students are Eager to Try Kudzu Food and Drink High school students in Dr. Jay Bolin's group Invasive Alien Plants and Animals: Friend or Foe to the Environment? always enjoy the kudzu class. Why? Well, they get to eat and drink kudzu concoctions.  Granted kudzu has a bad name, and it has certainly caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people. Brought in to counter soil erosion, this plant quickly became an invasive plant that would crawl over and tangle up plants, trees, and old broken down cars sitting in the field. Fighting it back has been like trying to stick your elbow in your ear. Given it's hard to impossible to do much about kudzu, students learn to make the best of a bad situation. The campers go out hiking and pick young kudzu leaves and then get to cooking. One favorite is fried kudzu leaves. Students make and eat these in their focus group meetings. The kudzu leaves are battered and deep fried. This is quite a southern tradition. Most anyone from t...

Heather White Meets with Redesigning the Future Summit Students   Heather White is the Executive Director of Environmental Working Group (EWG), and she made time to stop by Redesigning the Future to speak with everyone about the importance of communication. We communicate constantly, but we don't always do it well. White provided ways to think about the world, organize those thoughts, and get powerful messages out. White Reaches Out to High School Students Who Will be Our Future Leaders The communication skills program began with a game to get students up and moving and involved in the process of thinking about how we send and receive messages. Students Quickly Came Up with Ideas and Began to Fill the Walls with Words Campers wrote down thoughts on sticky notes and put them on the wall boards. Then White had them take the ideas from across the room and begin to organize those words and thoughts so that they had more than just a jumble of random sticky note ideas...

Members of the Sacred Spaces: Global Heritage and Conservation group spent some time in the campus preserve gathering items to create their own mini sacred spaces after learning about special sacred areas across the globe. Here are their creations. As you can see, each camper had a different vision of tranquility.            

By: Cierra Hunter A Backbone for Conservation led by Dr. Joe Poston, a professor of biology at Catawba College, gave students real hands on experiences in the wild. Members of the group included:   ISRAEL, PAYDEN, AUTUMN,   AMANDA, SETH, RACHEL, HOLLY, FABIEN, ALEX, VINCENT, BECAN, ALYSSA, CHLOE A snapping turtle is always a cool find. They are important to the ecosystem, but they are endangered in many areas for a variety of reasons. Here is a great video out of Canada that provides a lot of information about snapping turtles. It includes tips on how to help the snapping turtles too.

Students in Dr. Joe Poston's group got a very unique view of nature by using an outdoor video camera. You never know what's out there when no one is watching. Is this thing working? Yes it is, and the group was caught on nature candid camera. This little deer looks like she may suspect something. Maybe she has that second sense just as people do - "Hum. I have this feeling that I'm being watched." It's a little harder to make out the night animals, but this is a raccoon. He's enjoying a stroll through the forest and likely thinking about finding something good to eat . Of course, you always catch some tame critters on camera.

Dr. Charlie McAllister took campers all over the globe in his intriguing section on Sacred Spaces. Sacred Spaces group gathers for the final camp festival where each group put together a presentation highlighting the week at the summit.  Students shared some of the sacred places they learned about during the week . Members of this interesting group included: Rosalie Alff (Jefferson) Rebecca Bailey (Burlington) Eric Datta (Chapel Hill) Nataliyah Gray (Burlington) Justice Pennywell (Shelby) Isabel Pernia (Charlotte) Andrew Whang (Chapel Hill) The group was ably assisted by veteran counselor Kerstin Brown. The seven students began by collectively drawing a world map of sacred spaces, which began our conversation about this term. Then, in five sessions, they selected and profiled twenty-one case studies in three global regions from Beyond Belief: Linking Faiths and Protected Areas to Support Biodiversity Conservation (2005). Some of the countries: Columbi...

By: Payton Coleman As actors in the "Stories in Support of  Your Cause" campers have been allowing their creative juices to flow as they use their artistic talents to share their concerns for the environment. The main focus for the group has been to show how their passion for the environment can affect the world. One of the students shared her thoughts about the groups progress. What have you enjoyed about your group? "I enjoyed how we can tell stories with each other, be respected and act out the stories as well."                                                         -Lexie Burns Skit highlights the shortcomings of the other five camp groups but ends with a counselor mentioning the value of e...