Evergreen Community Charter school of Asheville, North Carolina is holding Better World Day, a week-long Earth Day event. Evergreen has anchored our Better World Day activities in our annual Earth Day event for years. This has traditionally been a day where our school community participates in watershed stewardship service projects around our campus with support from community partners and a variety of learning workshops led by local wildlife experts. This year, we are making important changes to our event that reflect our school’s mission more broadly and to more comprehensively embody our school’s mission.
In addition to including the traditional watershed stewardship-focused projects, our event will include actions that engage us with community stewardship and emphasize our commitment to breaking down the structural and relational barriers that perpetuate racial inequalities in our community. Our event will celebrate and engage all of the ways we are stewards of the natural world, the rivers, the wild animals, the air, and the humans we share our Earth with. This year on Better World Day, Evergreeners are “In This Together”, exploring the many ways our school’s practices of learning about and taking actions towards habitat protection and ecological restoration can be done with mindful attention towards the building and restoration of our human community, too.
WEEK OF EVENTS:
Friday, April 22- Earth Day! Evergreen’s Better World Day event: Community circle and school-wide day of service projects and learning workshops. Local wildlife experts Carlton Burke, Steve O’Neil, and Rob Gudger will be joining us to share animals and stories of the human impacts on the habitat of some of these wild creatures. The EV Club of Asheville will be bringing an EV car show and sharing information about the impacts of moving towards electric vehicles as one way to curb the impacts of climate change. Every grade level/classroom will engage with meaningful service projects, such as:
– Raised bed construction in the garden ($2K grant monies raised to support this project)
– Forest pond habitat restoration project ($1K grant monies raised to support this project)
– Water quality assessments in local streams with a community partner, Riverlink
– Campus composting program – building bear-proof classroom composting bins, with a community partner, Asheville Greenworks
– Food System Justice, service in local community gardens in partnership with local community gardens, supported by Bountiful Cities
– Invasive Plant Removal- education about invasive plants and their impact on our local ecosystems + service groups focused on the removal of invasive plants from our campus forest and AVL streams (in partnership with Riverlink)
– Family engagement: Evergreen’s Social Justice Curriculum team will share with our greater family community ways to be “In This Together” with us to work towards the greater health of our planet and our community.
Saturday, April 23- My Place in Race: An equity workshop for middle school youth. Evergreen aims to host this workshop that will bring youth from around Asheville together for a day of relationship building and learning together about ways to dismantle structural racism in our communities and the power of youth voice and youth action in this movement. Led by local community leaders. (still seeking funding to be able to make this happen)
Monday & Tuesday, April 25 & 26: Evergreen Plant Sale
A fundraiser to support Better World Day projects and partnerships
Thursday, April 28: Student-Led Conferences.
A family engagement reflection opportunity.
Friday, April 29- Monday, May 1: YWCA’s Stand Against Racism
