By Liv B, ACE Field Correspondent and student at Wheaton Warrenville South HS in Wheaton, IL

For environmental groups and clubs – Earth Week is like election day for a politician, a birthday for a kid and a swimming pool on a hot day! This week allows environmental groups to celebrate and garner attention for their hard work through out each and every year.

Our introduction to the serious problem of climate change began with the ACE Assembly at our school in the Fall of 2010, which startled and yet informed us on the impact our environment receives everyday.

Since then we’ve worked very hard at raising awareness to our students, teachers and community. Wheaton Warrenville South HS has always been a leader in education, activities, performing arts and athletics – so why not pump up the action of our environmental awareness club Verterra?

We got to work and created videos to best tell our story and messaging. Below is the fruit of our labor, just in time for Earth Day:

http://youtu.be/RjIJkgRg1bw

We worked really hard on this video and we truly enjoy the power of video to help spread our mission.

Some inspiration we had for making these shorts was the fact that we had a lot of talented people in our club, including at least 10 theater and acting fanatics who also love their environment. My friend, John (Enviro-Guy/Commish), is HILARIOUS and is a new member of Verterra, so I decided why not have him write us some funny shorts we can turn into videos about the environment.

We are showing the video to our entire High School this week Earth Week! This video is coinciding with our Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program and our re-useable water bottle sales we are running this week to celebrate Earth Week.

Verterra is a revival of a environmental club that had ended a few years ago at WWSHS, our new Verterra – in short order is enjoying great success.

Since Fall of 2010, WWHS’s club Verterra has won several ACE contests. First, we won the ACE March Madness competition by collecting over 800 DOTs (a DOT is a pledge to Do One Thing to help the environment – and cool the climate) and creating a huge eco-mural, is #3 for the DOT project in the Nation, has recently been featured in Patch.com and has other big plans in store for the future. We are a relatively small club at school with around 40 members and are continually growing.

We’re glad to be making a big impact! See you out there –

Liv B
Wheaton Warrenville South HS”