Winners of HP and DoSomething.org’s Green Your School Challenge were announced today, and the talented winning students will each receive some great prizes for using technology to generate awareness of energy conservation and make a positive impact on the environment.
Which Schools Won and What Were the Prizes?
The Prizes are being awarded to Chapel Hill High School in NC, Durand Middle School in Michigan, the University of Central Florida, City Academy in Utah, and the Grand Prize goes to Millburn Sr. High School in NJ.
The grand prize winning students will receive a $5,000 environmental grant, five brand new HP Pavilion DM1 notebook computers and a chance to Skype with Munn.
In addition to the grand prize winner, students from 4 more schools will be awarded $1,000 grants for their programs. All winning projects will receive an HP Pavilion DM1 notebook to help carry out their plans.
During the 10-week campaign, which ended on Earth Day, teens from more than 2,500 schools representing hundreds of thousands of teens nationwide led eco-friendly projects, including:
• Millburn Sr. High School (Millburn, New Jersey) whose students calculated the amount of pollution that idling cars in the school carpool line were emitting to raise awareness about air pollution.
• Chapel Hill High School (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) whose students used Facebook to ignite discussions around climate change, hosted Earth Week events such as Recycling Spies Day’ that rewarded students who were seen recycling, and constructed a 12 foot by 12 foot cube representing the amount of CO2 saved by recycling a week’s worth of newspapers.
Want to green your school? DoSomething.org has information on how other teens did this across the country. The memo is available online at http://www.dosomething.org/green/memo.
Teens might change their music, their hair color and their boyfriends or girlfriends, but their passion for environmental issues has not waned. said DoSomething.org CEO Nancy Lublin. In fact, we’re seeing deeper understanding of the issues at hand and a stronger desire to take meaningful offline action to curb climate change.
Actress and ”Daily Show” correspondent Olivia Munn was the spokesperson for the campaign and showed her commitment to protecting the environment through two public service announcements (PSAs), participating in calls with students and participating as a judge to choose the winners.
A panel of celebrity and expert judges, including Munn, photographer and humanitarian Nigel Barker and representatives from the Alliance for Climate Education, TreeHugger.com, Mobilize.org, Teens Turning Green, Climate Counts, Earth 911 and”Boho” magazine reviewed projects based on creativity, innovation and overall environmental impact. Innovative usage of technology by the students played a significant role in their decisions.
For more information, visit www.DoSomething.org/GreenYourSchool.
