Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Environmental Youth Summit sponsors 10 schools

March 18, 2010 - PRLog -- Date:  March 26-27
Time: Friday – 09:30 – 2:00, Saturday -- 12:00 – 2:30
Venue: Rich Products Atrium, One Robert Rich Way, Buffalo, NY 14213

BUFFALO, NY: March 22, 2010 – Student participants in the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo’s Environmental Youth Summit undertake challenges to improve their schools and communities. Scheduled for March 26-27, 2010, the event will be held at Rich Products’ Corporate Headquarters in Buffalo.

The Summit is a two-day event open to high schools in Western New York that offers a planning space for 10 teams of high school students to design and then implement action plans to address a community environmental problem. Professional facilitators from the International Center for Studies in Creativity of Buffalo State College provide direct support to the teams during the two-day period.

“Comprehensive planning has been undertaken to support more than 90 students and teachers from Western New York in their efforts to create projects that will improve the community,” said Dave Bauer, President of Sustainable Earth Solutions, which is the social business organizing the event.

Student teams from O’Hara High School, International Preparatory School at Grover, Burgard, The Park School, Academy of the Sacred Heart, Williamsville East, Nardin Academy, Mount Mercy Academy, Compeer Niagara, and South Park decided two weeks ago what challenges they will plan to remedy. Students from Williamsville East High School announced that they will explore projects related to natural resource management, which will include the exploration of options related to renewable energy sources. Burgard stated that they will lead a fundraising campaign and then complete their community project that started from last year’s Summit.

“The Summit seeks to empower the students to take action on issues that are important to them,” Bauer said.

“I was able to not only learn about new problem solving techniques, but also take away new ideas from people who share the same values…on the environment as I do.  The Summit creates an opportunity for our school to become successful in ‘green’ ventures,” Mike Olek, a past participant, said.

The teams will receive two major opportunities for advocacy support from Sarah Emhof, President of the Indaba Institute, and Marti Gorman, founder and lead organizer of Citybration and Buffalo Homecoming.

“The students will be shown how to change institutional policies to ensure the sustainability of their projects,” Emhof said. “The advocacy piece of the Summit will help it to achieve the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo’s region Shared Agenda for Action on the Environment.”

“We expect that more than 20 city boosters will arrive on the second day to listen to the students present their projects,” Gorman said. “We want our members to adopt these schools and help them get the resources that they need to be successful.”

This Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Summit will be the first to occur at a world corporate headquarters and to include student advocacy elements from the Indaba Institute and direct community support from Citybration.

Since 2006, more than 200 students have participated in three Summits to develop their action plans. They have completed projects that removed invasive species from the Bailey Peninsula and constructed outdoor environmental classrooms, greenhouses and clean energy sources for their schools.

Additional sponsors include Rich’s, HSBC, First Niagara, Solar Liberty, The International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, Rubber Form, and Higgins for Congress.

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Sustainable Earth Solutions, Inc., is dedicated to empowering youth to create their own solutions to address environmental problems by using research based methodologies for both teaching leadership skills and developing projects.