Saad1223
Registered: July 2011
Posts: 1
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Club Thicket’s premier project was creating a video in 2009 (my ninth grade year of high school) right before the end of the school year. This video was shown at Brookhaven National Laboratories and won my school an award. The following school year I got approval to create a Club on the Fish Thicket and begun having meetings on a weekly basis. From here on, the staff of my club and I have been filling out forms for the approval of various events.
With the Director of Science at my school, I have set up tours to take elementary school children to the preserve to teach them. Together we decide on times and dates and he takes care of busing. In order to better quality of these tours, Mr. Murray (the club’s advisor) and I train tour guides monthly. In the Summer, Spring and Fall we take kids on tours through the Fish Thicket to teach them about the ecosystems (including a Wetlands, Oak Forest, Oak-Pitch Pine Forest and Scrub Oak Forest) and environment. These tours usually include 2 classes (about 50 kids) a few chaperons, and 2-4 tour guides.
Club Thicket wished to install benched, tables, and trail markers in the area and to create pamphlets/a guide book on the area. In order to do so, we need funds, and so we frequently have fund raisers which have included: bake sales, Pixi-stick sale, lollypop sale, Fun-Dip sale, chocolate sale and more. For bake sales, club members bake goods which are then sold after school. For the other sales, my Co-president and I go online and look for good deals on high-demand products. We then order them and distribute them to club members who then come back with the money they raised.
So far, Club Thicket has raided about $1000. We’ve spent about $250 on various fund raisers and presentations. We’ve also spent about $250 on supplied for benched. These benches were made and installed in the Fish Thicket by club members.
Club Thicket also engages in promoting the Fish Thicket. The first example of this is our video presentation at Brookhaven National Labs. Another example of this would be a video which received national attention for being a finalist in Samsung’s Solve For Tomorrow competition. The video I made depicted the efforts of my High school’s AP Environmental Science Class’s water quality testing at the Fish Thicket and won my school $80,000. Another video I made, which describes the Fish Thicket won first place at the Long Island Youth Summit in the Category of the Environment. Also, I have done presentations on the Fish Thicket at Brookhaven National Laboratories, Dowling College, the Samsung Experience, a Model United Nations Conference and at my school.
At the moment Club Thicket is engaged in leading tours, a bake sale and a Lollypop sale. This week members attended a conference at the Quogue Wild Life Refuge. We have a new video to present to Brookhaven national Laboratories for their Open Space Stewardship Convention. Also, I am creating a video featuring Club members for the Central Pine Barren Commission’s Pine Barrens Discovery Day. Club Thicket members will be attending this conference in June.
For the Future, Club Thicket has a plethora of plans. We plan to go to the Suffolk County Legislature and preserve Swan River and other land as part of the Fish Thicket. We also plan to go to Kiwanis, a national community service organization, with a presentation to ask them for the funds to build tables, trail markers, informative signs, don’t litter signs, get garbage cans, and print brochures. We will continue to raise funds on our own to do this as well.
One of our biggest accomplishments will come in the fall. We plan to have a series of conferences over a one week period with 100-200 attendees to raise both funds and awareness. We will be working with the schools in our district to set this up and will invite the media to attend and publicize the event. We will have guest speakers to talk about the importance of the environment and will have many tour guides to lead small groups throughout the Fish Thicket.
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