Casco Bay High School
Portland, ME
The Casco Bay High School Green Team is composed of a passionate group of young environmental leaders that meet throughout the school year to create solutions towards environmental concerns and issues. Coming from an expeditionary learning school, the students are able to focus heavily on their community, and take on projects that help to improve their school as well as their city. The students of the Green Team needed an environmental project to take on this year and were able to find Tree-Plenish and participate in their own tree planting event to increase the number of green spaces all over their city.
Although the students did a great job fundraising, the help that they received from the Environmental Equity Fund assisted greatly in reaching their final goal. The students recognize that their community has a broad array of economic statuses, and being able to provide saplings for everyone who wants to participate is a very important aspect of the group. They know that helping those around you is a very important aspect of creating environmental change with one student remarking, “ It means more than donating a tree, it’s donating a green space for everyone to enjoy.”
Knowing that everyone can feel comfortable to sign up to plant a tree, and have equal access to green spaces provides more opportunities for everyone to be involved and truly feel that they are making a change as a community, and not just as the Green Team. The group acknowledges the responsibility the younger generation has to help the future not hurt it and recognizes that climate justice goes hand in hand with helping the planet, “caring for the Earth is also caring for the people who live on it.”.
Selecting a Tree-Plenish tree planting event as this year’s project was very important to the students of Casco Bay because it will help to increase the green spaces of the city. With Maine being a very rural state, the students take pride in, “creating a culture where you put the environment first,” and not only feel good about the choices that they are making, but also help those in their community learn how they can give back and reduce their net carbon footprint.
To support the efforts of Casco Bay Highschool and learn more about their event, you can visit their webpage here.
