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U.S. EPA AWARDS EDUCATION GRANTS TO HAWAIIAN GROUPS

Release Date: 8/4/1998
Contact Information: Lois Grunwald, U.S. EPA, (415) 744-1588

      (San Francisco)--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) today announced the award of environmental education grants totaling $49,691 to three Hawaiian organizations.

     "Education is the key for people to understand the world around them and make meaningful choices in their lives and communities," said Felicia Marcus, U.S. EPA's regional administrator. "These grants will help young people to a greater understanding of how we are all linked and responsible for both our local and global environments."  

     Including the Hawaii grants, EPA awarded grants totaling $200,000 to 25 organizations in the western states. Recipients of the grants include school districts, colleges and universities, non-profit organizations, and city, county, tribal, regional and state government agencies.

     The grants, awarded under EPA's National Environmental Education Act (EEA), will provide funding to support projects that will address significant environmental issues. Each organization will contribute matching funds. For more information on EPA's environmental education programs, access EPA's web site at: https://www.epa.gov/enviroed.

The recipients are:

Hawaii Department of Education, KidScience, Hawaii -$20,000 Watershed Detectives This project will fund five one-hour television broadcasts of  "Watershed Detectives" on the KidScience public broadcast network for fifth and sixth grade classes.  Each broadcast will feature demonstrations presented by professional environmental experts  and an on-camera teacher.  Students on all islands may participate by calling in on the telephone or Internet.  In-service training for teachers will offer activities that students can use before and after the broadcasts to measure the health of a watershed and develop individual action plans.

Manoa School, Hawaii -$4,716 Manoa School -Ala Wai Canal Watershed This project will fund a one day workshop to train Manoa's faculty in use of Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) instruments and protocols to allow students to conduct experiments in and around Manoa Stream.  Dr. Eric DeCarlo of the University of Hawaii's Department of Oceanography will provide  technical guidance for the project's environmental measurements and directing field studies that can safely be carried out by students. The Manoa Stream, which once provided fish and water sports recreation for the community, is closed to these activities due to pollution.  Students will forward data collected to the Clean Water Branch of the Department of Health and to GLOBE's database.

Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, Hawaii -$24,975 Project Stewardship This project will expand its current interactive partnership with natural resources managers for promoting environmental stewardship to two more Oahu high schools.  The year-long program encompasses five modules each of which contains specific pre-site, on-site, and post-site learning experiences that follow a progression of skills designed to prepare students for field activities.  The five modules are: biodiversity and stewardship, plant propagation techniques, invasive alien species control, revegetation and restoration, and mapping, monitoring, and stewardship.  As part of the curriculum, students will be  responsible for producing individual or team-based final projects based on the outcomes of their module study.