Sustainability

Sustainable Living Proposal:

For our Leadership Impact Project, our group chose to focus on sustainable living. Our goal was to raise awareness about the current efforts local companies and families are taking regarding sustainable living. Sustainable living is a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual’s or society’s use of the Earth’s natural resources. In order to do this, we held a panel discussion in the Glenbrook North library during all student lunches on November 26. A representative from Food Patriots, a group that educates people on being more organic, and a representative from ABT came to speak with students about their sustainable living efforts in hopes of answering questions and influencing students to become more sustainable in their own lives. Please watch our video below to see the final result of our work, and what we could have improved on along the way.

Challenge Statement:

• To help raise awareness about the current efforts local companies and families are taking regarding sustainable living.

The Plan:

• Get representatives from big name companies to come to our school and talk to students/faculty about what they’re doing to reduce the use of natural resources and how they are reaching out to the community to attain sustainability efforts.
• Companies and individuals contacted: Kraft, ABT, Food Patriots, Crate & Barrel, Allstate, Underwriter’s Laboratory, and University of Chicago
• Contact teachers about giving class extra credit for students who attend presentation: Ms. Jones, Mr. Cless, Mr. Unterman, Mr. Mathieu
• Mr. Cless was the only teacher willing to do this
• Half-sheet for students attending the panel discussion for extra credit to complete
• Panel discussion/presentation in the GBN Library during all lunch blocks
• Contact Ms Eddington about reserving the library for space to have our discussion
• Rally students via posters, announcements and word of mouth to attend the presentation and spark interest in sustainability

Benefits of the Project:

• Raise awareness on what companies and families are doing regarding sustainable living
• Increase sustainable living efforts within the GBN and Northbrook community

Definition of Success Criteria/Goals:

• Success will be defined if at least 30+ students attend this presentation
• Our total throughout all of the lunches exceeded this total, and the students were incredibly engaged with the speakers. They asked a variety of questions and even formed relationships to help achieve more sustainability efforts at GBN
• Get at least 3 representatives from companies to be a part of our panel discussion
• Unfortunately, we were not able to achieve this. Because we had to change the date, we were unable to have all three of our speakers in attendance. We were lucky enough to have both Food Patriots with their videos and an ABT representative to speak, offering two different approaches to the sustainability effort

Our Date:

• Tuesday November 26 (A Day), during all lunch moderations

Tips for the Future:

• Stick with one idea the whole time. By wavering back and forth initially, we lost time and could not be as successful as possible. We were cramming later to make up for the time we lost at the beginning and not all of us agreed on what to do.
• Contact companies and other organizations earlier. We learned a lot about the professionality and amount of time necessary to facilitate meeting with business professionals.
• Advertise more and sooner. We needed to get the hype up sooner about our presentation and emphasize the importance of sustainability in our community.
• Make sure all group members are in favor of the decisions, at least slightly. Concurrence among group members is necessary for collaboration and a strong work ethic.
• Have set plans for how we want to execute each piece of our project