Beyond installing gardens, Go Greenish is continuously making a sizable impact, now growing to represent 763 schools across the nation, increasing their partner collaboration to over 30 organizations in over ten states nationwide and helped to implement eight electrical school buses for the San Dieguito Unified High School School District.
In recent recruitment cycles, the organization has looked to expand their team by adding middle schoolers from the school's Green Team, as a Green Team Coordinator on Go Greenish – the first being Avi McCurdy.
Another valuable component of Go Greenish’s recent growth has been their collaboration with organizations nationwide. Since joining the team two years ago, Policy Director Angelina Coenen has been able to add five new partners to the organization.
Coenen added Barrington Environmental Establishment, Nurture Natives, Barnard Mandarin Magnet Elementary School, Dream in Green and Heirs to Our Oceans to join in partnership with Go Greenish over the past months.
Beyond being responsible for partner interactions, Coenen sends out monthly newsletters and is constantly “[looking] to find new ones” as well as, “strengthening relations with the partners in the school districts” that we already have.
“Partners could be from big [to] small organizations, school districts or individual schools,” Coenen said. “It basically involves a lot of outreaching, research into figuring out what are the missions of these other companies and really familiarizing myself with a lot of different sectors of Environmental Sustainability.”
Outreach Director Emiko Matsuda also assists with publishing monthly newsletters and gives updates to subscribers and followers through the Instagram page, @gogreenishca.
Beyond partners, Go Greenish has risen to implement air quality sensors into various schools to “provide live and accurate data on air quality,” according to Chief Operations Officer Sabine Chung.
The addition of this new tool was influenced by the recent events of the Palisades Fire and strives to provide information of communities air quality.
Over the past year, the Go Greenish team has made major improvements within their curriculum into middle schools and implemented recycling and composting within schools.
To accomplish this, the team has effectively placed waste stations, utilizing posters and signs to guide middle school student’s placement of trash and compost.
Matsuda is able to recognize this growth as she sees the team “expand more towards middle schools and youth education.”
“I think that's a really cool part of it is just trying to educate young middle schoolers and instill these habits into their lives, [while] bringing our initiatives to their campuses,” Matsuda said.
Coenen also has noticed sizable changes.
“We saw that a lot of our initiatives did still keep taking off,” Coenen said. “One thing that we had started working on when I just joined the organization was writing curriculum for schools, and now that curriculum is actually in schools. Seeing all of [our] little pilot programs take off this year, we've had the most presentations that we've ever had in Go Greenish history, which was really amazing. We were able to send our message to so many other people in so many new schools.”
Chung takes on the leadership role of writing the middle school curriculum in collaboration with other members. The goal of these programs and presentations is education and “sending our message to many other people,” according to Coenen.
Prior to the writing of the curriculums, Chung and Chief Executive Officer and Program Director of Road to Zero Waste Dean Smith did a “waste audit” at the schools to see the contamination in each bin and then tailor labs to that school.
“Students can discuss in math or science class [at their schools] to see how much waste is being put into the proper bins versus not. It becomes an educational lesson,” Coenen said. “Having middle schoolers join early has a big impact.”
In addition to curriculum and presentations at middle schools, Earl Warren, Diegueño and Oak Crest, Go Greenish hopes to have Green Teams or Eco-clubs.
“We're trying to change the education in their communities and get sustainability out there, get recycling and composting programs,” Coenen said. “So, while that doesn't directly affect state or community policy, it affects the way that composting systems and waste systems are being run indirectly.”
As Coenen reflects on her experience at Go Greenish, she recognizes that “having so many people come together and work hard even when there are blocks in their way …” gives her “hope for the future environmental situation.”
A constant driving factor of the Go Greenish’s team is keeping in mind the question – “How can we do better in the future?”
