Written by Anna Abgaryan
Earlier this school year, MAST@FIU's SEACORPS class participated in the annual Project Green Challenge!
In case you don't know, SEACORPS is a course offered at MAST@FIU that is designed to encourage environmental advocacy and hands-on projects relating to environmental awareness. Due to the current condition of the 2020-21 school year (regarding the ongoing pandemic), it has been proved to be a bit more difficult to have these interactive/hands-on projects in a remote environment. However, back in October, SEACORPS was able to participate in their first annual Project Green Challenge.
"What is the Project Green Challenge?" Well, I'm glad you asked! The Project Green Challenge (PGC) is a 30-day environmentally-themed challenge that occurs every year from October 1st to October 30th. Its purpose is to encourage students to learn more about serious environmental issues and actions they can take to help raise awareness to others and to do their part in helping the environment in becoming more sustainable. PGC accomplishes this by having different environmentally related themes for each day of the month, consisting of 3 challenges (Green. Greener, and Greenest) to do for that day- each one increasingly difficult (or to put forth more effort) than the other. As an incentive, for the Greener and Greenest challenges of the day, there are 10 submissions from each that are chosen to receive prizes/rewards for their outstanding work.
At the end of the 30 days, 16 finalists are chosen to continue on with bigger projects and out of them, there is one finalist that will be named the PGC Champion for that year. While SEACORPS did not apply to be a finalist, we did have multiple students win prizes throughout the month! The students will be listed towards the end but first, here is a message stating the importance of this project from the SEACORPS PGC Coordinator herself, Laura Sandoval (Senior):
"Participating in the International Turning Green 2020 Project Green Challenges was an incredible opportunity for our SEACORPS class. SEACORPS was founded at our school with the goal of raising awareness for environmental protection and advocacy in 2018. Our students take pride in finding innovative ways to combat the current environmental issues we face. It’s all about using innovation and creativity to promote sustainability. PGC allowed us to participate in daily critical thinking based challenges that focused on exploring the different ways our actions affect society and the environment we live in. Our students got to learn from a series of articles, documentaries, project ideas, and other materials provided. Being part of these types of projects is crucial to gaining a better understanding of the value of individual impact on the planet and the detrimental cycles we often engage in unconsciously. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience for all of us."
The following students listed were selected as one of the winners for their assigned daily challenges (If you'd like to see their submissions, just click on their names!):
Anna Abgaryan, Victoria Lippert, and Nicole Raz (Day 14: Soil Greenest Challenge)
Fiorella Perez (Day 17: Wellness Greener Challenge)
Gabriella Markovich (Day 20: Biodiversity Greenest Challenge)
Victoria Lippert and Arianna Lopez (Day 21: School Greenest Challenge)
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