What happens when you empower students to undertake a project of their own design and implementation? Multiple possibilities.
Such is the case with Crook County High School students, who recently took on an Earthwin Challenge along the Crooked River in Prineville. But let's start at the beginning.
"One of the first things when I came here was to assess the facilities, what needed to be done, and I put together a capital improvement plan," said Steve Waring, the Crook County Parks and Rec executive director, who moved from Central Florida to Prineville. "One of the items in our plan is an underutilized piece of property that was part of a larger Crooked River Corridor project and had identified a project of cleaning up the area and making it more accessible to the river." The property, on the south end of the Crooked River Park owned by the Parks district, had been prioritized in a "future plan" but one without any movement.
When Earthwin approached Waring looking for a project in the community, he said, "I just happen to have the perfect project."
On May 31, students from Crook County High School were bussed out to the southern end of the site to join in the cleanup. Weeds, garbage, debris and more littered the site, which prevented anyone from using the area. "A lot of kids kept saying this is great, I used to come here with my grandpa and fish the river," said Waring.
The Earthwin mission is to educate and expand awareness of mindful living for global well-being and inspire more and more people to commit to cultivating, kindness, awareness and thrive-ability.
"The mission may seem vague but that's done intentionally. The ultimate goal is to teach people we create our own reality," said Randen Traughber, founder and chief vision officer for Earthwin. "Our slogan is 'Everything we do matters.'"
Their Earthwin Challenge provides youth with a platform to create meaningful projects that benefit their community while applying STEM education fundamentals, learning project life cycles and bolstering their future applications for college or employment.
"We believe our youth are our greatest resource, and apathy is our greatest threat and our greatest challenge is engagement," said Traughber. Allowing for the students to take charge and do the work can have a viral affect, inspiring others.
"I was inspired by Rebeckah Berry at the Roundhouse Foundation to reach out to the Prineville community, because it is a rural community experiencing tremendous growth with a lack of resources to support it," said Traughber. "What I found was how the community rallies around community projects and supports their youth. Literally, doors flew open, and I didn't have any community leaders who didn't say 'Heck, yes this is amazing, what can we do to help.'"
The process traveled many layers, from school district to principal to teachers and finally to the students. The basic idea of the challenge is for students to identify a problem, come up with a solution, create a plan and fund it, and the students chose providing a safe river access to float the Crooked River. Upon hearing that, Crook County Parks and Recreation District and the City of Prineville enthusiastically partnered with Earthwin to identify the perfect location: A 26-acre site nestled adjacent to Crooked River Park which holds immense potential to become a vibrant hub for community engagement and environmental stewardship.
On May 31, 200 students and 20 adults dug in, pulling weeds, collecting trash and old tires and cleaning up the abandoned site. "The students did an amazing job, having fun and talking while cleaning up the area," said Traughber.
With Phase 1 completed, a larger goal of the project is to restore the riparian zones along the river. "It was a great win-win for both of our organizations, and there's a philosophy that if you take care of something, people will treat it better," added Waring.
"When kids drive change, people open doors," said Traughber. Future possibilities stemming from the initial clean-up include connecting OSU-Cascades students in various disciplines such as hydrology, riparian restoration, marketing and fisheries to work with and mentor high school students to expand the work to the rest of the park.
"Another aspect of the project is to create a digital application that will guide students towards actionable solutions and help them fund it with peer-to-peer fundraising," said Traughber. The idea is to utilize the digital social connections of the students, faculty, parents and others, for students to easily raise funds for projects and have a blueprint to follow for project management. Valuable lessons.
