Green Dream - International Children's Earth Day Exhibition

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Feb. 16, 2014 - PRLog -- Susan Newman, founder of Frogs Are Green is partnering with The Distillery Gallery and Artspace to exhibit 100s of artworks received from children around the world.  Some artwork will be hung on the walls of the gallery space and 100s more will be shown via projection. There will be scheduled events, “green and/or environmental” speakers, musicians, and more… especially on Earth Day!

About the Annual Children’s Art Contest hosted by Frogs Are Green:

Since 2009, Frogs Are Green has inspired and engaged children around the world to learn about frogs and amphibians and express themselves through art. Children enter the annual contest with drawings, paintings, sculpture, collage and other mediums. Entries have come in by the hundreds and from more than 27 countries. In 2013, some 450 entries were uploaded to the 2013 Frogs Are Green Kids’ art contest on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/2013kidsart/).

About The Distillery Gallery and Artspace in Jersey City, NJ:

Operated by Kristin J. DeAngelis and Gabriel Pacheco, The Distillery Gallery is located in a diverse neighborhood on the edge of the Palisades Cliffs. The Distillery is founded on the belief that it’s important to recognize and support innovative artists at all career stages.

The Distillery was founded to fulfill three basic needs in the Jersey City artist community.

* The need for a secure, professional space for art exhibitions that promotes and brokers sales for local and regional artists.

* The need for thoughtful and innovatively curated shows that encourage community dialogue and include a wide range of artists from all disciplines.

* The need to galvanize the artistic and local communities through public programs, educational outreach, and discussions of creative processes and key arts business issues.

Becoming a “Green Dream” Sponsor

By becoming a “Green Dream” sponsor you will be telling the world you care about saving frogs and amphibians and support Earth Day! That you want children around the world to be educated on how they can help the environment and be encouraged to continue to express themselves creatively.

Your sponsorship will allow us to build a substantial promotion campaign, engage speakers and musicians, and help build our month-long exhibition and live events.

Visit: http://frogsaregreen.org/green-dream/

Why Saving Frogs and Enlightening Children is the Environmental Answer

FROGS ARE GREEN is an organization created to increase awareness about the catastrophic decline of frog and other amphibian populations and to advocate for conservation measures to help protect them.

Why frogs and not some other animal or cause? Frogs and other amphibians are disappearing at an alarming rate. One third of all amphibian species around the globe are threatened with extinction. Frogs are extremely sensitive to environmental threats such as acid rain and global warming. They are also threatened by invasive species and habitat loss.

Recently, the deadly chytrid fungus has spread around the world, devastating amphibian populations. Many frog species are in immediate danger of extinction unless urgent action is taken to prevent it. In the words of Vance Vredenbrug, professor at San Francisco State University who is conducting research on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of amphibians: “Chytridiomycosis is devastating amphibians on a scale never seen before. With over 500 species affected, chytridiomycosis is the worst case in recorded history of a disease driving vertebrate species to extinction.”

Frogs, toads, and other amphibians (salamanders, newts, and caecilians) serve many vital functions in the ecosystems in which they live. Their disappearance is occurring so fast and at such an enormous scale that it has been compared to the extinction of the dinosaurs. And yet most people are unaware of the crisis.

Wangari Maathai, the African environmentalist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. In her speeches, she often uses the disappearance of frogs as a metaphor for an unhealthy environment. Maathai remembers as a child drinking clean and pure water from the stream near her home. She played among arrowroot leaves and was fascinated by the tadpoles wriggling through the clear water. This was the world she inherited from her parents.

Yet when she returned to her home in Kenya years later, she found that trees had been cut down, the land polluted. As she noted in her Nobel acceptance speech:

"Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder."

Frogs Are Green is determined to preserve for future generations the outdoor music—the chorus of frog song—that we remember from our childhoods. Our hope is that can we leave the “home of the tadpoles” green and healthy for future generations. Please help spread the message that healthy frogs equal a healthy green planet.