Schools and Campuses

Taking “education” to a whole new level!

Somebody had better get busy educating the people around us about our world, its challenges, and what we need to be doing to create a better future.

Might as well be you. And what better place to do some educatin’ than your own school!

First step: get others thinking about what’s going on in our world.

• Get permission to hold a computer smash-up in a public space to highlight the problem of e-waste, with signage telling about how many we throw away every day, and how many toxic components end up in landfills or in the hands of a Poor World recycler. (We throw away 130,000 computers a day in the US, and only about 10 percent are recycled—and these are typically shipped overseas and end up places like this, getting broken apart for the sometimes-toxic treasures inside them.)
• In a public area, create a “budget graph” of our national budget out of large boxes, with each stack relative in size to the amount of the federal budget it represents. Military Spending: $1.2 trillion (current wars and military apparatus, interest on national debt attributable to military spending, nuclear weapons program, veterans services); interest on federal debt: $240 billion; US anti-poverty programs: $120 billion (housing, school lunches, etc); tax breaks for wealthy Americans: $72 billion; Homeland Security $43 billion; Dept. of Education: $49 billion; Pell grants: $34 billion; subsidies to fossil fuel producers: $10; EPA: $10 billion; clean energy: $10 billion; aid to world’s poor: $8 billion; national parks: $3 billion. Then have petitions to sign for rearranging the budget to meet human need and protect the environment. (Here are the addresses of Congress.)
• Set up an assembly with a speaker on child labor, sex trafficking, climate change (NCP climate change page), or the 27 million human beings held in slavery TODAY around the world (see NCP resource on slavery). NCP director David Radcliff frequently speaks at schools and colleges on environmental or human justice topics. He’s knowledgeable, engaging, and occasionally funny.
• Do something yourself to call attention to an issue or concern, such as spending only a dollar a day on food—like a billion of our neighbors.
• Get yourself on an NCP Learning Tour and come back with stories to tell about the situation of girls, refugees, the rainforest, or other hot topics.
• NCP's Food for Thought is a hunger experience like nothing you've been a part of—complete with environmental refugees and local global warming impacts! Versions available for grade schools and youth/young adults.
• Do a class report on any of the issues on this page—great way to educate your peers (and maybe your teacher!) Contact NCP for resources.
• Need more ideas? NCP’s Get Organized! page has links to separate info-pages on over consumption, global warming, poverty, women’s issues, and indigenous rights.

Need motivation/inspiration? Give a listen:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking out against the Vietnam War in 1967 and the threats of US imperialism—change a few words and it could have been preached yesterday… http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.
• U2’s Bono at the National Prayer Breakfast challenging our national leaders to work for justice http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/bononationalprayerbreakfast.htm

Next step—mobilize for change
How can you impact the larger community? Some possibilities:

Justice

• Time for a fund-raiser for your school or club? Sell candy bars without selling out—switch to Fair Trade instead of chocolate from cocoa plantations using child workers.
• Does your campus have a “sweat-free” purchasing policy (clothing at the campus bookstore, for instance)  Check out: http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org
• Does your school promote the Graduation Pledge to consider the social and environmental consequences of future work?  http://www.graduationpledge.org
• Work with campus religious leaders or other activists to do an advocacy/action campaign on a current global issue. For instance: learn about sex trafficking and then raise money for girls’ education, one key to keeping girls out of the sex trade.

Environmental

• Is there a school-wide policy for purchasing “green” products and having green practices—from light bulbs to copy paper to toilet paper to cutting back on lawn chemicals to installing low-flow showerheads?
• Does the food service company purchase any locally-grown food? (buying local food produced 98 percent fewer carbon emissions in a Virginia Tech study)
• Are there widespread recycling containers?
• Are there good vegetarian options in the cafeteria (meat production has a huge eco-impact?
• Are there loaner bikes around campus?
• Do campus police and other workers get around with energy efficient vehicles—or even bikes?
• Is there a limit on the number of free copies each student can make at library printers—and after that a per page charge?
• NCP’s Tom Benevento has a degree in Sustainable Systems and is available as a consultant to campuses wanting to reduce their energy footprint. http://newcommunityproject.org/grounds_keepers.shtml
• Get your friends to kick the drinking habit--bottled water, that is! Think Outside the Bottle!  Dive in deeper—more water info here!
• Measure the food waste in the cafeteria. Then begin a campaign to remove trays from the cafeteria, eventually having everyone carry their food to their tables on plates—then measure how much less food is waste.
• If you're on a college campus, work with administration to hold a contest between dorms to see which one uses the least water/energy per person—or which one reduces consumption the most based on an earlier base-line. Reward with pizza—and smaller increases in tuition.
• Use meal time to educate your peers about the impact of meat-based diets and other issues by using NCP's Table Tents.
• Lots of your friends packing their lunch? Find out how to save money and the planet by going waste-free!
• Get one of NCP's global warming info/action blurbs in each week's edition of the campus newspaper.
• Compare your school to those listed on Sierra Magazines Top Ten green campuses http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200711/coolschools