YISS EcoSave FunFest Fundraiser

Over the past several months, the EcoSave club has carried out numerous lessons for different elementary classes.
On November 7th, the EcoSave Club achieved its first engagement with the YISS elementary school. In collaboration with Ms. Kelly Han and her kindergarten class, EcoSave members helped raise awareness among the younger generation on endangered species and habitat loss. The EcoSave club presented a lesson and a corresponding craft. The children’s artwork was then compiled into a poster that was later displayed in the school lobby.

In continuation with the teaching of elementary students, on March 16th, the EcoSave club worked with Ms. Kara Minor and her second grade class to raise awareness about global warming. Ms. Minor’s class had just finished a unit on weather, so the EcoSave club made sure to tie in this theme to the presentation for a comprehensive and engaging lesson. The children also completed a craft: groups were assigned different habitats to create with colored clay. The second grade students demonstrated great maturity and collaboration skill to construct beautiful artwork.

Finally, on May 18, the EcoSave club collaborated with Ms. Esther Stair to introduce her second grade class to the process of recycling. After giving a short presentation, the students participated in an activity involving trivia and “trashketball,” in which they had to sort a variety of different pieces of garbage into the correct container.

In October, the YISS EcoSave club fundraised at an event called Funfest to donate money to the WWF Tiger TX2. The game involved throwing a recyclable trash into the appropriate trash category (plastics, metal, paper, etc.)  

By Daniel Kim and the YISS EcoSave Club

Ocean Pollution Awareness Poem

The ocean is larger than any land we can inhabit, and it is beyond our scope of knowledge and private lives. Thus, it is convenient for us to search for excuses and isolate ourselves from the problem that we created for the ocean: our pollution. Yet, the ocean has always been a part of us and our world. As a result of our recklessness, we are actively killing 100 million marine animals per year and are also producing pesticides, oil spills, and metals such as mercury that end up affecting the marine animals that we end up consuming. As I have stated before, harming the ocean directly harms us. The ocean is indeed another tragedy of man’s mistakes and seems as if the harm we started is almost irreversible. However, the problem can be reversed.We only need not to lean on our own desire for comfort and convenience. Instead, we can take the initiative to prevent and reduce the harm we started. To that end, I offer a poem to highlight the ease in which these sentiments can be resolved by simply changing the way we look at things--that sometimes, it's simply a matter of thinking differently, positively, from the ground up. While this poem structure is by no means unique, I did feel it would be a poignant way to express the duality of thought involved.

Reverse Our Actions

The ocean is long gone!  

Don’t tell me that   

I can make a difference.  

Because after all

The ocean is dead, acidified with the Great Coral Reefs bleaching.

And I’m not reassured that

Bivalves and clams can build the calcium carbonate to build their shells

So I will remind myself that

the harm is irreversible

And we can not say that

Plastic bottles will be eradicated from our most precious resource

Because whatever effort we show

Oils spills like Deep Horizon and garbage stews like Pacific Trash Vortex will prevail

And it is not true that

The petroleum and fertilizers can be halted from running off the land now.

We can ponder that

the remedies for acoustic bleaching will succeed

Even though whales will still lose direction, with the loss of their primary sense of sound,

We will try to lie to ourselves, yet

There will be consequences

and don’t you know that when fish eats plastic,

We eat garbage that harms ourselves too?

So let’s stop dreaming of a false idea and believe that

The ocean can be saved.

By: Daniel Kim