News Item
Earth Day celebrated with a tree planting and more
The Monticello High School Eco Club hosted a celebration for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day with a tree planting ceremony. The club honored Green Technology guru Dick Riseling, their guest speaker, with their first "Eco Hero Award” and planted a Colorado blue spruce in his honor. This event was well attended by the student population, administration, staff and the general public. High School Principal Arleene Siegel opened the ceremony, welcomed guests and thanked the Eco Club for helping to raise student awareness on environmental issues, such as encouraging students and staff to recycle on a regular basis.
The Eco Club president, student Amber Bock, welcomed the gathered crowd while vice president, Alex Fortea, spoke about the importance of Earth Day and its origins. In a short introduction, Alex highlighted some of Mr. Riseling's "Green" contributions.
"It’s
not often that you find someone so committed, so fervent and so true
to renewable energy and environmental betterment," said Alex. "This
is why Mr.
Riseling was chosen for this honor. He has been fighting
for clean energy in our county for more than 30 years. Mr. Riseling
was the first to install a wind turbine in Sullivan County. On his
farm, he
offers intuitive workshops on renewable energy and hosts a
weekly radio show explaining how to increase environmental
awareness. He is self-proclaimed as being energy independent while
still striving for environmental and communal interdependence.”
Other guest speakers included Minnette Kramer, a Legislative aide for State Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, who spoke about some laws that Ms. Gunther helped enact for the betterment of the people of New York. The others who helped make the celebration a success included staff from Sullivan County Renaissance, Manza's Family Farm, Shoprite of Monticello for the cake they donated and Catskill Hudson Bank for the reusable totes they gave to students for the “Make a Pledge for Earth Day” campaign. As part of the event, the Eco Club sold organic goods and trees for Arbor Day. Future plans include starting an organic school/community garden.
The history of Earth Day
Forty years ago, Gaylorn Nelson called
for an environmental teach-in as a response to environmental
degradation. He called for “Earth Day.” That year, a
little over 20
million people participated. Today, over 500 million people
participate worldwide. Members of the Monticello High School Eco
Club are
responding to environmental degradation and hope to raise
environmental awareness and reparation with this event and many of
the activities in which they initiate and participate.
"Green" brochure designed and donated by student
MHS tenth-grader Kevin Fusco created a brochure titled "Going Green-Our Path to a Cleaner and a Greener Earth." He donated the brochure to the ECO Club to use in their Earth Day celebration. Kevin produced this brochure in Joyce Kocsis’ Career and Financial Management class, where students were assigned a project in which they used and applied the information from their online investigations and research to produce reports and brochures on a topic.