This is a guest post by Cassie Aikens, student at T. Wingate Andrews Green Team. 

During the Do One Thing campaign we had students pledge to do one thing to help the environment. We camped out in the cafeteria for all three lunches for 3 days right near the lunch line with a mobile computer cart and color printer. As students came out with their lunch we asked them to choose to do one thing differently that would help reduce their carbon footprint. We had previously made several templates to choose from, like “reduce”, “reuse” and “recycle”, but students were also free to choose their own. “Walk to school”, “Grow my own vegetables” and “ride the bus” were among the impromptu choices. We printed their names along with the thing they were planning to do to reduce their carbon footprint superimposed over a picture of the Earth. We taped all of the papers to the window in our cafeteria to get more people to do one thing, and to show everyone how many people chose to get involved. We also painted a mural on the window to encourage students to participate. We also went door to door to get the teachers and staff to sign up.

We ended up with slightly less than two hundred participants in the campaign, and we have about 700 students in total enrolled here. The DOTs took up four large windows in the cafeteria. We learned from this experience that students are willing to participate if the participation is made more personal to them. Our Do One Thing campaign was a success! It attracted more members to the Green Team and has since spawned several school-wide recycling projects. Every week, students go to each classroom collecting newspapers and cardboard, and we have a centrally located used battery disposal can.