Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

As a seventeen year old female I have always been the type of girl who wants to help around and make the environment more suitable. Having a dad who grew up in a farm, I have inherited the instinct to keep my surroundings clean and healthy. I come from a family of six people, and keeping up with bills and groceries is difficult for my family. For this reason we try to be as efficient as possible with our resources. Seeing the struggle my parentâ€™s face I have learned many ways to save energy and make the most of the little we have. I am also a big fan of the sights of our environment. For many years I have been bewildered to see the beauty that Mother Nature has to offer us every single day. Only sometimes do we see the pure ugliness put upon her by people.
Being from a very welcoming community and surrounded by loving people, Iâ€™ve decided to conduct an Apprentice Ecologist project. Merely because I saw it as a great opportunity to help better the environment and a very important field to me and many more young people out there. This project was conducted at my very own high school, Immokalee High School, a place where Iâ€™ve been enrolled at for the last three years. This school is always trying to maintain clean, but Iâ€™ve noticed that it was the handicap children who took on this caring act of keeping our school clean. With a group of people who love the arts, I conducted a project where we went around our school picking up all the trash we found around our campus. You may be wondering what art has to do with this, but it has all to do with it.
Over the years Iâ€™ve been hearing a lot about how our environments needs to be taken care of better, and how the arts are going extinct and no one really gets involved with hands on activities as much, itâ€™s all digital now. Well one random day as I was looking for scholarships to fund my college and I came across this scholarship, and I immediately knew what I was going to do, I was going to create artwork with recycled items.
For several days a group of friends and I took our time to go around and picked up any recyclable items that were useful to us. The main thing we found was Hot Cheetos bags, and we came up with several ideas on what to do with them. Finally, a brilliant idea popped into our minds, and we unanimously decided that we would create a flower and a picture frame with it. The flower became a symbol of our project, representing nature and what we were doing to improve it. The picture frame served as a memory of this project, and how it will hold a place in our hearts forever because it was a neat experience for all of us.
After having built these amazing ideas, we decided to continue with some other smaller items to build. One of those items was a boat made of newspaper that was used and thrown away in the recycling bins we have at school. This was done in inspiration of those kids who have no toys to play with, but always find a way to build their own, like in this case a boat made from a newspaper. Along with the boat, a heart was built from the newspaper as well. This heart was made to represent the love that the group and I felt for our environment. A bracelet was made a yet another symbol to our project, just like the breast cancer awareness has made items to represent their cause, so have we. This bracelet I am talking about has been made from the soda can tops that were taken from cans in our recycling bins. The little soda can tops will serve to signify the importance of recycling. This will help with our cause by causing awareness to everyone who comes across a bracelet weâ€™ve made. We also made a pencil out of some yellow paper we found lying around outside a classroom. Just like the rest of our items the pencil also adds symbolism to our project. This pencil represents the place that the experiment took place at, our school.
Our school is very important to all of us who helped with the project because it is where we experience new things, grow as an individuals, but most importantly where we go to learn and develop new skills that will prepare us for the world out there. Where I live, it is a small town that not many people think of as a healthy environment, but I made it my mission to help better that by starting off at the one place I spent most of my time at, my school. I think it is important to keep my school area clean because it can possibly hinder the learning of some of the students, including mine as well. For me it is very important for a healthy mind to develop in a healthy environment. My school was the perfect place to conduct this project, simply, because it would make the school look nicer and far more inviting to the students. Not everyone gets the benefits of going to a luxurious school, but with hard work and some effort we can make it seem like we are.
After conducting this project I have been inspired to do more with my life than many ever will. In the near future I plan to conduct another project just like this one in another place in my community. Once itâ€™s been done I will find a place to display the artwork that will result from it. Iâ€™ve been recycling for nearly three years now at my very own house. This has helped me better my choices in life and how I eat. One thing many people would never think of doing is recycling leftover food. What! You might think this to be odd but it really helps us in many aspects. The first is in reducing the amount of trash taken to the trash dump weekly as well as the trash bags being used to hold that left over food. Another way is by helping the soil get nutrients from the decaying of the food when itâ€™s in the ground. Over the years my dad had been trying to grow plants, but it wasnâ€™t until we recycled our food that the plants began to grow beautifully. Stating this side note I think I will never stop this cycle of recycling things I find useful not only to mother nature but to human kind as well. After all one manâ€™s trash is another manâ€™s treasure and the trash at our school has become the treasure weâ€™ve found to keep art alive.