Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

Rooting for Change Team took educated the community about water quality issues affecting our community and the people who live in it. In order to educate, we organized and participated in a number of different events in association with many organizations.
The first event was a tree planting effort on the Chagrin River. Working alongside other high school students and other organizationâ€™s representatives, we were able to plant close to five hundred trees.
We hosted a community wellness seminar at a local high school that we planned. We were able to secure Dr. Roizen as the main speaker. Dr. Rozien is a nationally acclaimed expert who has co-authored books with Dr. Oz. This event that we helped to plan was broadcasted live and advertised for on local television.
We hosted a water bottle giveaway at one of our high schoolâ€™s varsity football games. This event helped to educate the community; Friday night football games are large community gatherings in our town.
To spread the word about our project we employed a number of different mediums. To promote the wellness night with Dr. Roizen three thousand flyers were passed out to schools, businesses, our local YMCA, and libraries.
Promotion now means social media. We used social media to promote our events and gain recognition. The Rooting for Change Team has a Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram account. Three different social media platforms allowed us to reach people locally and internationally.
Rooting For Change was successful on many levels! We were effectively able to spread the word about healthy choices through our cooperation with Dr. Roizen and his organization. This presentation, coupled with other seminars that we presented, allowed us to communicate our message to others and make a community impact.
Our team was also successful in the implementation of our plan. We were able to plant over 500 trees that would prevent soil erosion and runoff, preventing our water supplies from contamination. Also, we collaborated with other groups to be more effective in our actions. Although we achieved much success in our project, we were also faced with many challenges. It was rather difficult to get our message out at first; however, once we were able to start spreading the message, it quickly expanded. This is not only due to our communications in person, but also through our strong use of social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Through our use of social media, we were able to continue expanding our efforts to neighboring communities and reach more people.
To get our word out on a local level, we hosted events at the local Friday night football games where we had a table with signs and passed out many water bottles. Furthermore, we spread many ideas through our school with the school newspaper, website, and signs. Although it is hard to put a number on the amount of people we reached, it is well over 1000 due to our many communications efforts. Additionally, the 500 plus trees we planted had an enormous impact in our community.
As members of Rooting For Change, we learned many new things. On a more obvious level, we learned about many health hazards and about ecological problems in our community through our efforts. However, we also learned how to be persistent and diligent. This is demonstrated by all of our efforts to spread the message to the community. Lastly, we all acquired a sense of leadership in our community.
This is a project that we started to better the community as a whole and it really taught us how to lead our community in such a great endeavor.