Environmental Education Mini-Grants Available!
Does your classroom need a worm bin? Would you like a presentation on eco-footprints from The Green House. Kokua has started a mini-grant program to help Hawai’i public school teachers pay for supplies and trainings for their environmental education initiatives! Applications for this school year are available here.
26 schools participated in Kokua’s Environmental Education Field Trip Assistance Program during the 2007-2008 school year. In all, over 2000 students from Hawai’i's schools were able to visit locations like Maui Nature Center in Iao Valley, Hawai’i Nature Center in Makiki, Waihe’e Shoreline on Maui and Camp Erdman on O’ahu’s North Shore. Principal Sheldon Oshio, along with the 2nd grade teachers of Waimalu Elementary School shared this about their recent trip to Hawai’i Nature Center, “… this field trip provided a wonderful learning experience for our students as well a first hand look in to the Cycles of Nature. They were given an opportunity to see, hear, and touch nature outside the classroom. Our students now have a better understanding and appreciation of nature’s delicate balance and how they can take an active role in the world around them. This certainly was a memorable field trip for all.�?
We look forward to supporting many more environmental field trips in the upcoming school year!
Why are these field trips so important? View this short video produced by the No Child Left Inside Coalition on the value of experiential environmental education. Check it out and sign on to the coalition today!
All At Once (www.AllAtOnce.org) is Jack Johnson’s social action network providing information, tools, and motivation to empower individuals to become active in their local and world community. When on www.AllAtOnce.org, members discuss, explore, share, volunteer, and learn about important environmental issues and are rewarded for taking environmental action with free music downloads from Jack Johnson and friends. At Jack Johnson’s concerts, All At Once comes to life in the Village Green. Concert-goers connect with non-profit groups, learn about environmental actions they can take, capture environmental commitment photos, and enter to win a chance to watch Jack’s performance from the stage. Jack Johnson selected over 150 credible local non-profits worldwide to share their message online and in person at each show throughout the tour. Kokua Hawai’i Foundation is proud to be a non-profit partner of the All At Once Community. For a complete list of all non-profit groups and to become an All At Once member, visit www.AllAtOnce.org.
Start a tradition of committing to reduce your eco-footprint every Earth Day and throughout the year. Our partners at Kanu Hawai’i will help us record Earth Day Resolutions year-round here on our website to measure the positive impacts we make together.
Date: June 1, 2008
Time: 5:00pm, discussion to follow
Place: Spalding Auditorium, University of Hawaii
Tickets: $5 at the door, Seniors Free
King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.