Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

One club that holds a special place in my heart is the Environmental Club at Christian Brothers. Our focus as a club is to make our school more environmentally conscious and raise money for local wildlife funds. Every year, the club hosts an Earth Day festival for the whole school. Itâ€™s one of my personal favorite events with the main stand being a thrift store made up of clothes donated from CB students. However, last year we did things a little differently.
Over the pandemic, I had picked up many different hobbies to fill my time, but my favorite has to be jewelry making. I wanted to help raise money for the Environmental Club using my jewelry skills and leftover materials, and two other freshmen volunteered to help me make jewelry. For about a month and a half, I spent all my free time making earrings and necklaces by hand, as well as decorations and signs for our stand. The tips of my fingers were constantly scratched from the wires I worked with every night, but I knew it would be worth it.
Finally, the Earth Day fest was upon us. I headed to the main field an hour before the event began to set up our table. We had music, secondhand items, tall stands with glittering necklaces, and of course, tons of earrings. As soon as the students came out, our stand was swamped. We could barely keep up with the hundreds of students looking through our wares. It was the busiest hour and a half of my high school career, but it was amazing and so exhilarating to see my hard work pay off. We had about 300-400 items to sell, and at $5 apiece or two for $8, we ended up making $1,144.50 and donated every penny to a charity called Carbon180 that funds research to remove carbon emissions from the air. Leading this jewelry stand with two amazing girls showed me that we really could make an impactâ€”I couldnâ€™t believe how much we had made! It was an invaluable experience and I canâ€™t wait to bring it back for the 2023 Earth Fest.