Groundwork’s Green Team efforts get wings as Southwest Airlines contest winners

Aug. 29, 2011 - PRLog -- Local high school students involved in the Southeast San Diego-based Green Team will be going even farther to study climate change as winners of 40 roundtrip airline tickets from Southwest Airlines.

Part of the nonprofit Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek family, the Green Team was among 40 nonprofit organizations awarded 1,600 airline tickets during Southwest Airlines’ 40th anniversary contest. The carrier, with services in San Diego, selected winners based on their focus on community initiatives that concentrate on education, diversity, military, environment and families facing serious illnesses.

According to Southwest Airlines’ blog announcing the win: “Students on the Green Team participate in citizen science and service activities, including habitat restoration and wildlife surveying.  They bring the inspiration, knowledge, and skills they gain at national parks to projects in their communities.”

Made up of 20 area high school students from the Elementary Institute of Science, Second Chance and Morse High, this year’s Green Team recently returned from four days in California’s Santa Monica Mountains and Channel Islands National Park. The students experienced their first wilderness camping through a Groundwork USA partnership with National Park Service Research Learning Centers. During their expedition, the students learned about the role invasive species play in habitats, and they engaged in an invasive species removal project. The students will apply that knowledge and those skills to improvements in their own Chollas Creek watershed here in San Diego. As a result of their excursion, the students were able to see the connectivity between invasive species, habitat, wildlife and, ultimately, humans.

According to Groundwork Executive Director Leslie Reynolds, the 40 Southwest Airlines roundtrip tickets will be used to continue the Green Team’s citizen scientist research and education. Two Green Team members, Yvezee Lapada and Lerno Sarno, will first travel to the Groundwork USA Youth Summit in Denver next month to meet with Green Team members from across the country. There they will begin to formulate their 2012 service project at one of the National Park Service Research Learning Centers. One opportunity may exist with an exchange at Biscayne National Park in Florida.  Biscayne area students would be hosted by the San Diego Green Team to study the effects of climate change at Cabrillo National Monument and San Diego students will go to southern Florida to study the impacts of climate change on that ecosystem.

Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek is an independent nonprofit business that strives to improve the environment, economy and quality of life in Southeast San Diego. Groundwork works in partnership with the City of San Diego and with the assistance of volunteers, communities and businesses to restore creeks and open spaces, provide educational outreach on water conservation and climate change issues.   For more information, please visit www.GroundworkSanDiego.org.

# # #

Scribe Communications is a full-service public relations firm headquartered in San Diego's prestigious La Jolla Golden Triangle business hub.