Cimarron-Memorial Earth Club recognized for its efforts

The hard work of members of the Cimarron-Memorial High School Earth Club to encourage recycling at their school and throughout the school district was recently rewarded when the club received a $2,000 donation through "Keys to Innovation," a program supported by Lexus and Grammy award-winning singer Alicia Keys that honors schools for their environmental programs.

The school is now up against nine others for a $10,000 national award.

In addition to the donation, the students received tickets to Keys' concert May 9 at the MGM Grand Garden arena. Club members and their adviser, Jennifer Newman-Cornell, attended the sound check, visited the VIP lounge and had a meet-and-greet with Keys before she performed.

"The concert was amazing," says senior Ria Daniels, the club's vice president. "Alicia was so nice and told us to keep up the good work."

Newman-Cornell says the Earth Club and its recycling program were brought to the attention of "Keys to Innovation" organizers through other schools in the Clark County School District.

The CMHS Earth Club has been busy with its recycling program for two years and has hosted district meetings and recently operated its own Earth Day Booth at the Summerlin Earth Faire.

"Our program gained a lot of strength this year," says Newman-Cornell. "We've been recycling paper, cans, bottles, batteries, ink cartridges and cell phones."

"The $2,000 donation will help to get more bins with wheels," Ria says. "We have between 10 to 15 paper bins right now and each classroom has a box for paper."

"Manpower is an issue," Newman-Cornell notes. "We have six ladies with collection bins every week with over 3,000 students dumping items in the bins and a hundred classrooms."

Newman-Cornell, who teaches Spanish and French, began recycling paper with the Language Club before forming the Earth Club.

"We are a pilot school to try out ideas that come from the district meetings. This year has been about expanding. The kids want to see what other schools are doing," says Newman-Cornell. "We are trying to unify throughout the district."

The next level of competition pitting Cimarron-Memorial against nine other schools from across the country requires each of them to submit an action plan by June 18.

For the CMHS club's action plan, club members made a video featuring students from 11 other valley schools called "Recycling Rocks."

"The video is to help students start their own program and it discusses what is recycling and how to get a program started," Ria says.

The club will make DVDs of the video and distribute them to all district schools to be shown when classes resume in the fall. According to Newman-Cornell, the DVD will be accompanied by a "how to" manual featuring ideas, contact information and Web sites.

Sophomore Katie Rainford says the club's goal for the next school year is to continue encouraging students to recycle.

"We want to increase the amount of recycling and have more people recycle items instead of throwing it in the trash," Katie says. "We want to increase their knowledge of recycling."

Other Earth Club members include freshmen Chelsea Wallace and Shelbie Herrington; sophomores Jessica Thomas and Brittany Wallace; and seniors Alessandro Sambvani, Megan Spain and Nicollette Lewis, club president.

• In other youth news, sixth-graders at Faiss Middle School will talk with officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama about career opportunities, thanks to the help of new video conference equipment provided by Wells Fargo as part of the bank's Grant a Wish For Your School program.

Teachers apply for the grant money, administered by the Nevada Public Education Foundation, to support innovative ideas in the areas of financial literacy, math, technology and careers.

If you know of a worthy candidate for this column, mail information to Youth Spotlight, Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125-0070, or send faxes to 383-4676.