Ecochallenge.org

Drawdown Ecochallenge

Frida Velez

Chikara

"I will help save the earth by reducing my carbon emissions, saving our waters/oceans, and defending human rights."

Points Total

35 Today
175 This Week
8,772 Total

Participant Impact

up to

85

minutes

spent learning
up to

237

meatless or vegan meals

consumed

Frida's Actions

Electricity

Carbon Footprint Calculator

Use the link below to calculate your own Carbon Footprint.

COMPLETED 122
DAILY ACTIONS

Health and Education

Connect With A Nonprofit

Health and Education

I will connect with a local nonprofit working on issues affecting women, girls, and/or trans/nonbinary people in my community, and find out how I can get involved or become a member.

Completed
One-Time Action

Health and Education

Women are at the front of Farmer's Protests in India

Read the article below and reflect on the event with your advisory and independently.

COMPLETED 59
DAILY ACTIONS

Health and Education

Research Barriers to Participation and Representation

Health and Education

I will spend at least 10 minutes learning more about the barriers to women's equal participation and representation around the world.

Completed
One-Time Action

Health and Education

Why have the accomplishments of African Civilizations been obscured?

Harvard professor and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. is interviewed by Audie Cornish about his series Africa’s Great Civilizations.

COMPLETED 45
DAILY ACTIONS

Health and Education

Jaysa Miller and Youth Voices for the Planet

Climate Change and pollution disproportionately affect Black Americans and communities of color. Young people like Jaysa Miller have had enough. Miller is working to unveil and hold developers, policymakers, and factory owners accountable for the risk they put communities in. Learn about her work by watching the video below!

Completed
One-Time Action

Industry

Time's Kid of the Year: Water Quality Tester Engineer

Gitanjali Rao is the first “Time’s Kid of the Year”. She is being recognized for inventing a device that detects lead in drinking water.

Completed
One-Time Action

Action Track: Healing & Renewal

BLM/BHM

The Black Lives Matter Movement drafted 13 Guiding Principles. These principles were created in order to heal and sustain our communities. Read through the Guiding Principles. Choose at least one to reflect upon.

Completed
One-Time Action

Food, Agriculture, and Land Use

We are all connected: Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, she was not the first African woman to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize but racism, colonialism, and sexism have long played into this award. Read about Maathai, a biologist and activist, and reflect on what Americans can learn about her work and apply to our own hemisphere.

Completed
One-Time Action

Industry

Recycle Everything I Can

Recycling

Contamination prevents what is recyclable from being recycled. I will research and recycle all materials that are accepted by local haulers or drop stations in my community, making sure to not contaminate recyclables with non-recyclables.

COMPLETED 143
DAILY ACTIONS

Action Track: Healing & Renewal

Climate Change Action

Watch the film and respond to the reflection question :)

Completed
One-Time Action

Food, Agriculture, and Land Use

Eliminating food waste during Thanksgiving (or other big meals!)

Watch the video and respond to the reflection questions below :).

Completed
One-Time Action

Land Sinks

Learning to Fly

Our surroundings, the environment--natural and manmade---have a huge impact on our life story. Watch the video together and then share a memory of your home, your neighborhood, or another special place that has helped you become who you are today.

Completed
One-Time Action

Food, Agriculture, and Land Use

Reduce Animal Products

Plant-Rich Diets

I will enjoy 1 meatless or vegan meal(s) each day of the challenge.

COMPLETED 237
DAILY ACTIONS

Action Track: Justice for the Whole Community

Voting Rights

After you listen to the StoryCorp episode about voting rights, reflect on what it means to vote. Check in with the adults in your life-are they planning on voting? Why or why not?

Completed
One-Time Action

Action Track: Justice for the Whole Community

Native Land and Practices Acknowledgement

Native Land Acknowledgement means to learn about, talk about, and show respect for the Native inhabitants of an area of land. We do this for many reasons: to correct history, protect and preserve the culture and identity of native peoples, acknowledge the role of European colonization in the loss of native lives and lands. For this activity, read about the Lenape. The tribe indigenous to Brooklyn, Queens , and Manhattan. Who are they, what was NYC like before colonization? How can we honor the Lenape today? (links below)

Completed
One-Time Action

Health and Education

Sir David Attenborough: The Voice of Planet Earth Speaks on Climate Change

After you watch the video with your advisory, answer the reflection question below. For additional points, respond to a teammate's post!

Completed
One-Time Action

Food, Agriculture, and Land Use

Climate Change and Wildfires: How is climate change affecting you? Our hometown? And what can we do now?

First, the article about the CA wildfires and climate change. Climate Change In Your Hometown The featured article discusses the connection between climate change and California wildfires. Another Times article, from 2018, lets you track how the number of days when temperatures hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) or higher changes in your hometown over your lifetime. As you look at the graph created based on your hometown and the year you were born, what do you notice? (If you want, try entering the birth year of your parents or grandparents as well.) Then, scroll to see the climate predictions for your hometown when you are 80 years old. Continue to scroll to learn more about these predictions, and then see how your hometown compares to other parts of the country and the world using the interactive globe.

Completed
One-Time Action

Action Track: Justice for the Whole Community

Sustainable BUGS

The goal of this action to create a more sustainable school experience for our students and staff :)

Completed
One-Time Action

Transportation

Use Muscle Power

Multiple Transportation Solutions

I will cut my car trip mileage by only taking necessary trips, and I will only use muscle-powered transportation for all other trips.

COMPLETED 241
DAILY ACTIONS

Action Track: Justice for the Whole Community

Learn about 'Green Gentrification'

Multiple Solutions

I will spend at least 20 minutes learning about green gentrification and how it relates to city planning for climate action.

Completed
One-Time Action

Action Track: Justice for the Whole Community

Learn about the Legacy of Redlining

Multiple Solutions

I will spend at least 20 minutes learning about the legacy of redlining and how city planning and environmental justice issues are interconnected.

Completed
One-Time Action

Electricity

Learn More about Biomass

Biomass Power

I will spend at least 20 minutes learning more about the energy generation potential of biomass.

Completed
One-Time Action

Electricity

Choose Renewable Energy or Purchase Renewable Energy Credits

Onshore Wind Turbines, Utility-Scale Solar Photovoltaics

I will sign up for my utility company's clean/renewable energy option. If my utility does not offer one, I will purchase Renewable Energy Credits to match my usage.

Completed
One-Time Action

Coastal, Ocean, and Engineered Sinks

For the love of nature

Post a photo of something from nature that you love and want to protect.

COMPLETED 189
DAILY ACTIONS

Action Track: Social Justice

Songwriting

I used my creativity and self expression to write a song about the current times. OR I researched and shared a song about the current times.

Uncompleted
One-Time Action

Feed

Reflection Question
Health and Education Why have the accomplishments of African Civilizations been obscured?

Why have the accomplishments of African Civilizations been obscured? How can we sustain these accomplishments and their impact?

Frida Velez 3/24/2021 5:47 AM

The accomplishments of African civilizations have been obscured because Europeans profited off of taking over Africa and enslaving people there, so they wanted to justify all of the harm they did by saying that Africans were/are "savages" instead of the innovative people they were/are as if the Europeans actually saved them by taking over their land. We can sustain these accomplishments by researching African history more and sharing it with others.

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Reflection Question
Health and Education Connect With A Nonprofit

What are the most pressing issues for women, girls, and trans/nonbinary people in your community?

Frida Velez 3/17/2021 5:52 AM

One of the most pressing issues for women, girls, and trans people in my community is getting them food, water, and the other supplies they need during COVID-19, since women and trans people are more likely to be living in poverty because of employment discrimination. Also, COVID-19 makes it even harder to receive help and/or escape from intimate partner violence (since you can't stay with a friend or other family member when you're trying to distance from people), and since women and trans people are way more likely to experience that, they're being way more affected by it now.

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Reflection Question
Health and Education Women are at the front of Farmer's Protests in India

What is the link between women and agriculture? What vital roles do women traditionally play in the farm-to-table cycle in India?

Frida Velez 3/10/2021 5:56 AM

Women are often the ones caring for livestock, children, and making meals, across the agriculture of the entire world. This work is often overlooked, but it's hard work and plays a vital role on both the farm and in the economy. In India, women traditionally do a lot of manual labor on their family-owned farms, and do the cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. Laws concerning them and their farms are usually passed by men and benefitting men, which is unfair, because women play an equal role, if not a more important one, than the men when it comes to running farms.

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Reflection Question
Health and Education Jaysa Miller and Youth Voices for the Planet

How did Jaysa leverage her power as a young person to make sustainable change? How can we come together as a community to put pressure on developers, policymakers, and factory owners to make better decisions so that Black Americans don't have to continuously deal with the consequences of environmental racism AND advocate for change? People deserve to just exist and not have to fight for existence.

Frida Velez 3/10/2021 5:44 AM

Jaysa leveraged her power as a young person to make sustainable change by telling people that she's the future, and if we can't make these changes for the present, we have to at least make them for the future. Also, people are probably going to want to protect children, and Jaysa can use her experience of serious asthma as a child to motivate them to help her cause. And the ways that we can come together as a community to solve these problems of environmental racism are going to protests together, making and signing petitions for different companies to be more sustainable with their practices and stop releasing coal fumes, and educating each other about these issues so more and more people can help.

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Reflection Question
Health and Education Research Barriers to Participation and Representation

What are some of the barriers that exist to women's equal participation and/or representation in your community?

Frida Velez 3/03/2021 5:54 AM

Some of the barriers that exist to women's equal participation and representation in my community are that there are way fewer female world leaders around the world, so women don't get nearly as much representation in government as men. Also, women spend about three times as many hours caring for their families as men do, so they don't have as many opportunities to instead be making actual money during that time and advancing their own lives. But women account for 70% of all essential workers during the pandemic, so though they don't have as much representation in government, they're the ones risking their lives more in order to support their communities.

Read More
Reflection Question
Industry Time's Kid of the Year: Water Quality Tester Engineer

If you suddenly had the ability to invent a device that helps humanity, what would it do? (draw a pic and upload it you can!)

Frida Velez 3/03/2021 5:40 AM

I would invent a device that created insulin out of thin air, because insulin prices are getting really high and a lot of people have to sacrifice their school tuitions to pay for their or someone else's insulin. This device could save lives.

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Reflection Question
Action Track: Healing & Renewal BLM/BHM

How can this guiding principle show up in our school community on a regular basis?

Frida Velez 2/24/2021 5:46 AM

We can use Diversity in our school community on a regular basis by talking about Black history all the time, not just Black History Month. We can do this by comparing and contrasting their historical practices and beliefs to the historical practices and beliefs of the social groups that we learn about during any given time, especially in Social Studies class.

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Reflection Question
Food, Agriculture, and Land Use We are all connected: Wangari Maathai

What did you learn about Maathai's work? How is her work connected to contemporary African diaspora and climate change? What is one connection between events in Africa and decisions made across the world in American?

Frida Velez 2/03/2021 5:59 AM

What I learned about Maathai's work is that she not only helped plant trees, but she's also advocated for human rights. Her work is connected to contemporary African diaspora and climate change because she's been teaching people to plant trees all around Africa, and has connected with the UN, letting the whole world know of her cause. Planting trees helps with climate change because trees absorb methane, which is one of the main greenhouse gases that create global warming. One connection between events in Africa and decisions made across the world is that women have been underprivileged in both places. Wangari Maathai was the first woman to become the chair of Veterinary Anatomy at a university in her region, while women around the world haven't been getting equal pay and are underestimated.

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Frida Velez 1/13/2021 6:03 AM

I think Levi chose to end his memoir with the story of carbon because carbon is what makes up all life, and it's what keeps traveling from object to object, not dying even when the being that it's a part of is dying. Putting it at the end of a book kind of wraps it all up in a big idea, because carbon has to do with all of the other elements described in the book.

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Reflection Question
Electricity Carbon Footprint Calculator

What can you do to either lower your carbon footprint OR "offset your carbon footprint. When you "offset" you basically pay it forward---you do something kind for the environment or another person to balance out your carbon use if you can't reduce it.

Frida Velez 1/06/2021 5:53 AM

I can lower my carbon footprint by trying to replace some of my household items with more eco-friendly ones. For example, I can ask about buying low-flow toilets and showerheads, try to get an Energy Star printer, refrigerator, and/or computer, and line-dry my laundry instead of putting it in the dryer.

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