Sustainability Week gives campers insight on environment

Written by Greg Maker

Thursday, 29 July 2010 17:04

Reduce, reuse, recycle. These three words are small but their effects have worldly impact. Though at a camp where fun is the reason children attend, a sustainable life lesson is being taught. Children at the Beth El Summer Session were exposed to sustainability for a week, but taught concepts that should last a lifetime.

“Since summer camps in Westchester County are in a very competitive market, we were thinking of exciting programs we could offer,” explained Beth El Synagogue Office Manager Maggie O’Neill, who came up with the idea to have a week dedicated to sustainability. “In the current economic times when people are coming to dollar decisions, we need to see what sets us apart and above the competition.”

From July 19 through July 23, campers were taught lessons in sustainability. Dressed as an androgynous smiley face character called “Sustainable Sam,” O’Neill stood in front of the campers each day to stress the three R’s. Every day, the campers learned a new vocabulary word dealing with sustainability and received a tip on how to accomplish it. Activities throughout the week included recycling relay races in the sports portion of camp, learning to color on both sides of the paper in art class, and creating a pencil holder from cardboard during nature lessons. Children were taught to take something old and turn it into something new. Sustainability Week was highlighted by a carnival where children played games that further reinforced what they were taught.

“When I first heard of the sustainability idea I though it was great,” stated Beth El Director of Programming and Youth Activities Erica Leventhal. “This allowed us to bring an educational element to an informal social experience and bring ideas with very complicated concepts to young children.”

Leventhal, who also serves as the assistant director of the summer session, explained how the activities were wrapped in such a way that the children did not see them as work but as fun.

“We knew these were teachable moments but am not sure if the kids knew they were learning at the time,” Leventhal explained. “This shows that there are a lot of opportunities for informal education. As educators and people who work with children, we want to make these moments into opportunities where they can take away important life lessons.”

O’Neill, 23, has been involved with sustainability from the time she was a small child; she feels youth education on green measures is lacking at present.

“In a place like Westchester County where we are supposed to be ahead of the curve, kids aren’t offered these opportunities as much,” O’Neill said. “In the end this is something that everyone will benefit from.”

O’Neill added that she sees the summer session as a time when children spend most of their time outside. She noted that a lot of the kids seem disconnected from the natural environment because of all of the available technology.

“Their generation will be carrying the heaviest burden in terms of the world’s natural resource depletion,” O’Neill said. “It is important to grow up and know what you are doing. With my parent’s generation, nobody really knew about sustainability and it just clicked suddenly.”

O’Neill was not unaware of GreeNR, the city’s sustainability plan before she started Sustainability Week. She has since become aware of it and feels that some of the elements of GreeNR need to be put in place.

“Recycling is an easy concept but the action of it can be hard,” O’Neill said. “There needs to be some sort of state funding to municipalities where people and schools are given recycling bins.”

Though this is the first time that recycling has been incorporated into a larger activity at Beth El, Leventhal stated that the synagogue has always stressed responsibility. She also thinks that GreeNR will be a helpful tool for New Rochelle moving forward.

“I think it is great that New Rochelle recognized the need for these types of programs and are putting the energy and dollars into making them happen,” she said.

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