4-H Million Trees Wins 2010 Seaworld Environmental Excellence Award
Pacifica 4-H Club - Pacifica, CA
Project Facilitator - Tom Webber The 4-H Million Trees Project (4HMT) is an international service-learning project to inspire up to 6 million 4-H youth to plant trees in their communities to slow global climate change. Since the project was founded in 2007, over 26,000 youth in 43 states and provinces have planted more than 101,000 trees. At maturity these trees will sequester approximately 5 million pounds per year of atmospheric carbon dioxide. These 4-H youth are doing their part in the climate crisis.
Besides the tree planting goals, 4HMT has a number of other targets that match the major tenets of 4-H youth development, including providing opportunities in leadership, community service, and chances to develop life skills such as public speaking, article writing, and public outreach.
4HMT works within the distributed structure of 4-H, where youth in each club make decisions independently. Every month, youth from each 4-H club select and perform a community service project, and tree planting events fit perfectly into this tradition. Each club has discretion over its own tree planting events, and youth leaders plan for and make decisions about the planting location, number and species of trees, tree sources, funding options, and maintenance plans.
This effort is a service-learning project within 4-H's Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) initiative to inspire youth to consider SET education and careers. 4-H clubs are always encouraged to include an educational component to their tree planting events. For example, 4HMT suggests clubs use partner ERTHNXT's age-appropriate Trees for the 21st Century curriculum to help kids understand the physical, environmental, and biological importance of trees. 4-H encourages learning-by-doing, and 4HMT gives kids the chance to get dirty as they learn how trees impact their world.
Publicity is the most challenging part of the grassroots 4-H Million Trees Project, and distributing an invitation to all 6 million North American 4-H youth in over 90,000 clubs and units is very difficult. To spread awareness, 4HMT identifies intermediate (middle school age) and senior (high school) 4-Hers to give PowerPoint presentations to county 4-H clubs to teach youth about the importance of trees in their communities. In addition, 4HMT recruits senior 4-Hers give speeches to thousands of youth at regional and state 4-H conferences. Providing youth with public speaking opportunities is a big part of 4HMT, because once a young person has spoken to large groups of people, he or she gains confidence and future public speaking anxiety is dispelled. 4HMT also encourages kids to publicize their events by writing articles for the local paper, the club or county 4-H newsletter, or causing articles to be written or TV shows to be produced about their work.
The 4-H Million Trees Project has brought great benefits to its leaders and participants, including the opportunity to participate in SeaWorld's Environmental Excellence Awards. Therefore, another goal is to encourage youth to conceive of and develop large-scale community service projects in their passion areas so they can realize similar rewards. All it takes is the seed of an idea and some follow-up, and the rewards are enormous.
4HMT has succeeded on many levels, most notably as a structure for young people to participate in the climate crisis. Many individuals and organizations contribute to build this network, and as more people and groups join, the 4HMT tree grows stronger. As we say, every day is a good day to plant a tree!
http://seaworld.org/conservation-matters/eea/2010/ci.htm