Sprouts of Hope: Greening Our School

Composting Gets Launched at King Open

By Maya

Two years ago the Sprouts of Hope, a Roots & Shoots group in Cambridge, MA, went to city's school committee to tell them why we thought we should stop having to use polystyrene lunch trays at our school. The members of the committee seemed very interested and listened to what we had to say. We wrote them a thank you note to tell them how much we appreciated them listening to our ideas and asked them again about changing the trays. About a month later, we went back to talk to them again -- and this time we read our thank you note --and then they passed a motion to require the superintendent to look for environmentally friendly alternatives to how we were using the trays in our cafeteria.

The Superintendent created a committee that looked at all the different possibilities -- from using dishwashers in each school to wash reuseable trays to purchasing ones that would be able to turn into compost. After looking at price of compostable trays and evaluating the other options by how they would affect the environment, the committee decided to start a pilot composting program for food waste at our schools. When our school shows that it works, they will start to teach other schools how to do it, and eventually the idea is to be able to eat off of the kind of trays and use the kind of spoons and forks that we can also throw into the compost barrel.

To prepare for the composing program we had meetings after school on Thursdays. Two of the Sprouts of Hope -- Kaya and me -- were able to go to all the meetings, and some of the others went to some of them when they didn't have other activities. There were also three other kids from the afterschool environmental program called Cambridge Can, and one of the custodians at the school who has been helping us with our Waste Free Lunch days.

Here's a picture of two of the Cambridge Can members on our first day of composting.

Our science teacher Donna Peruzzi was always there to help us come up with ideas for how to get other kids really excited about the program. And here's a picture of her using the compost barrel in the cafeteria.

And we worked with Meryl Brott, who is the new recycling director for the city of Cambridge. Then, there was Randi Mail, who directs the city's Department of Public Works, and Jim Maloney, the COO for the Cambridge School Department. At some meetings, people like Jack Mingle, who heads the Cambridge schools' food department, and Jose Wendel and Dawn Olcott from the Cambridge Health Alliance joined us.

You can see pictures of Randi, below on the right, and Meryl, on the left, when they were helping us to do the composting that first day.

It was cool to think that because of what the Sprouts of Hope and two other kids from King Open had said to the school committee, we were now meeting with adults who are in charge of big departments in the school and in the city. And they were asking us for ideas about how to make this happen at our school!!! At one point they asked us to come up with an idea for a composting mascot, and so we talked about it, and then one day I did a pencil drawing of a worm wrapped around an apple core. I sketched the design and gave it to Jack Mingle one night when we went back this fall to talk with the Cambridge School Committee about the composting effort He said he liked it, and before I knew they'd taken my design and made it a cartoon-like mascot!!!

To get every one to feel excited about being the first kids in the city to do a composting program at a school, we planned to do two assemblies; one would be for kids from kindergarten to the 4th grade and the other for 5-8th graders. We planned them for the morning of the day when composting would begin -- our hope was to let all of the kids know what composting is, why it matters that we do it, and how to do it. Then we felt like it was really important to find ways to inspire them to want to do it.

During the assemblies Meryl Brott spoke about how it would work in the cafeteria and she did a great job of explaining how composting helps the environment. (It keeps a lot of waste out of landfills, and when food is put into landfills it gets buried in lots of trash and gives off methane gas which is really bad for global warming.) You can watch a movie we made about the day, and it shows how Meryl explained how composting helps animals -- and the kids loved seeing the animals on the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuD1B3k8g4

The younger kids got to see a slide show that the Sprouts of Hope had made of students at King Open bringing eco-friendly containers and recycling their polystyrene trays during Waste Free Lunch days on days when we tried doing them at our school.

They also got to see Meryl and Randi do a demonstration of how to compost. For the older kids, after Meryl spoke, we showed a fun video that the Cambridge Can kids (you saw Eve and Brianna's picture earlier in the blog entry) made about all the trash we throw away at King Open and showed how easily we could reduce it and why it matters that we do. Next we played an inspiring “Yes We Can” video of President Obama speaking and singers performing that was put together by Will.I.Am. You can watch have fun watching it, too, on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

After that video played, a picture of “Martin Luther King” came up on the screen and a student, in voice that sounded a bit like his, gave us a message about how proud he was of us for doing something to make a positive difference in the world. (You can hear this on the YouTube movie, too.)

At lunch that day we became the first school in Cambridge to compost at school, and it went REALLY, REALLY well!!!! There were banners and posters in the cafeteria and notices were sent home to let families know it was happening.

The kids poured their liquids into the white bucket, and they put their food into the yellow bucket, trash into the black barrel, and their tray into a big bag that will take them to the place where they get recycled.

Everyone got a sticker saying, “I compost my school lunch because I care.”

We had student monitors who'd been trained to help other students and they got to wear aprons with our mascot on the front. They gave the kids good hints about how to put their waste in the right buckets. My mom took pictures and videos of the kids composting and saying how excited they are about doing this! When you watch the YouTube video about our first day -- you can find the link above -- and you'll get a good sense of how excited everyone was about doing the composting.

I knew that it would go well because the grown-ups in our school -- like Principal Tim -- and those from other places like the Department of Public Works helped us to be sure it did. But I didn’t think that it would go that well!! And Principal Tim said at our assembly how kids can be the ones who have good ideas and why it's important for grown-ups to listen to their ideas and find ways to help to make them happen. This is what happened with this idea -- since it started with kids talking about replacing the trays and ended up with us doing composting as a first step.

Here is a link to a Cambridge Chroncle article about the composting effort at King Open and it tells about how the Sprouts of Hope were involved in making it happen:

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/education/x1098980048/Cambridge-school-aims-to-be-greenest-in-Boston-area

I hope the spirit of composting doesn’t go away so that our pilot program will go smoothly throughout the year. When that happens, then we know it will work at other schools in the future! And when it works at other schools, too, we will be that much closer to being able to replace the polystyrene trays with ones we can toss into the compost -- and that will be a very happy day, too!!

We've also learned that some kids at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, our city's high school, have started a Compost Club. From March 2nd through March 6th, some of the club's members, such as Jonah Vorspan-Stein and Eliza Cohen, who went to King Open, moved from table to table to collect food scraps and paper waste. While doing so, they explained to students how composting works and why it's important to do. A story in the school's newspaper says within a year the Compost Club hopes to establish permanent compost bins in the cafeteria and do more trial weeks of composting in the meantime. It also says that the club hopes to have assemblies and presentations about composting. We say "Go For It," and we hope it happens soon at your school, too.

Sprouts of Hope: Telling Our Stories to Adults

Speaking at the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society Conference

By Kaya

The Sprouts of Hope were extremely happy when Roots & Shoots New England told us we were invited to speak at the MEES conference. MEES stands for Massachusetts Environmental Education Society, and the organizers of its annual conference wanted us to talk about what we’d learned in trying to make our school, King Open in Cambridge, MA more “green” and also about some of our other environmental activities.

Learn more about MEES at: http://massmees.org/

Very early on Wednesday, March 4th (a school day!!) the seven Sprouts of Hope climbed into the car and we drove for about an hour to get to Holy Cross college in Worchester. The ride didn’t seem long because we were talking and listening to music on our Ipods, so it wasn’t a boring ride. We also got to miss the first half of the school day! This made the day even more fun.

There were lots of people who came to this conference, all of them adults; we were the only kids. Also Christine Ellersick, the program manager at the New England chapter of Roots & Shoots was there too, and she helped us provide information about Roots & Shoots to the people who came to hear us speak.

Here's Christine talking about Roots & Shoots -- and that us on the screen behind her.

We had our own room to do our presentation, and Maya and Mia were the Sprouts who talked that morning. [We take turns in speaking at events. ] About 25 adults came to listen because, as they told us, they were curious about how to make their schools greener by doing things like composting or starting a “green” club with the students. There were principals and teachers, even a Spanish teacher, and some who were students at universities. This made us excited and nervous! Principals! Wow!

We prepared a slideshow with pictures of a lot of our activities. We had pictures that show us speaking to the Cambridge School Committee about replacing our polystyrene lunch trays, and the Waste Free Lunch days we did at our school, our exhibit last year at the Cambridge Science festival about waste reduction, and our work in our school’s City Sprouts garden. The music we put with the pictures was from High School Musical; it’s called “We’re All In This Together.” At each seat we placed one of our “6 R’s” cards (you can see what the 6 R card we designed looks like below) and a couple of papers about Roots & Shoots that Christine had brought.

Our Talk

First Maya introduced all of us, and then she told the adults how we prepared for and organized our waste-free lunch days at our school and how we try to live by the six R’s – Rethink, Renew, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot – and teach others about how they can live with them, too. She told them about the survey we did in our school when we asked kids at King Open how they packed their lunch and what they did with the waste from it. Then, Maya let them know that normally our school produces 8 or 9 bags of trash per day and how on our waste free lunch days we were able to reduce that number by half. But, she told them, the number always went up again when the waste free lunch day was over. Our goal is to get kids to think about this every day so that the number of cafeteria trash bags can down to 3 each day.

Maya explained that our school can’t yet switch from using the polystyrene trays to using ones we can compost because they cost a lot more and we don't have composting in place. By the time we have our composting program in place, we hope the price of the other trays has dropped. We brought some trays with us – we call the polystyrene one the “bad” tray and the other one “good” – and we passed those around so everyone could see and feel the difference. Mia explained what happens when the trays are recycled. Amazingly, I had some of the little plastic pellets (the ones the polystyrene gets turned into) in my pocket, so we passed those around too. Mia told them that one big problem is that a lot of kids still throw their trays in with the trash so they don’t even get recycled. This means they go into landfills and end up giving off methane gas and that is really bad for global warming.

Mia talked about a lot of the activities that the Sprouts of Hope have done. She describe how each year we raise money so that we can give it away to support other groups doing good things in their communities. And she told them about the two times we’ve done an exhibit on opening day of the Cambridge Science Festival. We are going to another opening day exhibit about energy efficiency at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival on Saturday, April 25. Follow the link, below, to find out more about the festival. It's really fun, and we hope you’ll come to see our exhibit and the others on April 25th:

http://www.cambridgesciencefestival.org/Home.aspx

Maya talked about our current project with NStar. It involves each of us using a Power Cost Monitors and Kilo-watt meter at our home to measure our energy use. She also spoke about a school fundraising project we did with NStar when students like us sold fluorescent light bulbs. When she told a story about how one girl bought 100 bulbs for a “green wedding,” many people laughed and clapped their hands enthusiastically.

Mia then shared some important lessons we’ve learned in the two years we’ve been active in Roots & Shoots as the Sprouts of Hope.

1. It's important kids understand they should try not to change everything all at the same time.
2. Teach patience and persistence. It’s a winning combination!
3. Don’t give up when something doesn’t work for the first time.
4. Make good partners; include parents, teachers, staff, administrators and city employees.
5. Help kids learn to document what they do – like this blog we do reminds us of what we’ve accomplished. And kids can use a blog to share their stories and communicate with others about what they’ve done.
6. Celebrate your successes. Each year, the Sprouts go to an indoor rock climbing wall and we have fun helping each other to climb. And then we eat a cake and celebrate what we’ve done together.
7. Evaluate how to best spent your limited time and energy.
8. Be open to serendipity. Like this year when we went rock climbing, the guy who led us invited us to do one of our bake sales at MetroRock when they have a competition.

You can see our panel and listen to one of the teachers who was there talking about our talk on a short video we made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEWkCY2lZ0U

Maya and Mia spoke wonderfully and answered questions at the end of their presentation. All the adults thanked us for doing such a good job in teaching them about what kids can do and how adults can encourage and support their efforts. Some of them didn’t know what they should do in their green clubs at their schools, so we offered advice. Others want to start a composting program at their school. Since our composting program is starting at our school on March 11th, we could tell them how we are preparing for that big event – with the pep rallies we are doing and how some of the other Cambridge departments, like the Department of Public Works which does the recycling and composting, are helping us to succeed.

When we drove to school, we were happy about how we'd shared what we’ve done and passed along some ideas and lessons learned that we think are helpful. Usually it’s the opposite, adults teach kids, but this time it was kids teaching adults. In the car, we were singing (at times yelling) along with the radio. It was fun to think that we'd taught others and learned a couple of things too at the event, so we were all extremely proud of ourselves. Go Sprouts of Hope!!!!!!

Sprouts of Hope: Climbing In Celebration

By Risa

Each year, around this time, The Sprouts of Hope go rock climbing. Not outside, but on tall walls inside at MetroRock in Everett, MA. This is our way of celebrating another year of being together since we met as a group for the first time on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in 2007. It was because we were thinking about Dr. King and his life that day that we decided to put the words “Have a Dream, Make a Difference” on the t-shirts we designed. On that day we also came up with our name, The Sprouts of Hope.

You can watch a video of us climbing -- and encouraging each other as we climbed -- at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4mOd3hJVt0

Climbing up these walls is really fun, and this was our second year of doing it as a break from our hard work of planning and doing the activities we do in Roots & Shoots. This time was a different experience for us than it was last year when none of us had climbed before. After our first climbing afternoon, some of us decided to take some rock climbing lessons during the year, and Kaya went to camp there during the summer.

Being at different skill levels, however, didn’t effect or take away from the fun we had. It made it even better. This time we got to do more climbs because some of us could belay the others. Last year, we had to depend on Sarah and her assistant, who are instructors at MetroRock, to belay each of us. This year, Bryan helped us, but he didn’t need to belay everyone. We had a lot more fun because we could help each other.

When one of us was up on the wall, you could hear helpful words passed up to them. “Can you reach that one right there? Yeah great job.” We depended on each other to get up the wall, and then we had to also rely on each other to get down, as the person who was holding the rope had to let it out gradually as her friend bounced off the wall coming down.

We have photographs of some of us climbing, some belaying others, and some with us just having fun being there with each other.

After our climbing, we had a small meeting to talk about upcoming projects, like the one we are doing about energy efficiency. Each of us named some kind of energy use that we wanted to measure in our homes, and we’re going to do those experiments and write about them on this blog. During our meeting, we ate amazing cake that Maya and Melissa made and decorated with Sprouts of Hope written on the top. For her hard work and patience, the Sprouts kids and parents gave Melissa a pretty glass plate with a tree on it and we donated money so she can get things we need for our activities, like if she needs to print some fliers.

Going rock climbing with The Sprouts of Hope was really fun. All of us are eager to go together again next year.

Our Day of Community Service: On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Volunteering in Room 206

By Lilly

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January, The Sprouts of Hope decided to participate in a community service project arranged by the Roots & Shoots group at Northeastern University in Boston. (Sadly, Eliza, Mia and Kaya couldn't join me, Jane, Risa and Maya in this activity.) We were inspired to do this, in part, by a video message Michelle Obama recorded to urge people to get involved in their community by helping others on this special day. You can listen to her message by clicking on this link: http://usaservice.org/page/content/calltoservice/

This national holiday was happening on the day before she became First Lady and she asked people around the country to do something for the community in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., just like she and her husband were planning to do in their new city of Washington, D.C.. So The several members of the Sprouts of Hope, along with other Roots & Shoots members, volunteered at the Mission Hill School in Boston.

When we got to the Mission Hill School, we found out that there were many jobs to be done: making posters encouraging the kids to conserve water, cleaning out classrooms, organizing the library. We chose to clean a combined fourth and fifth grade classroom, and when we first entered the classroom, Room 206, there was a list of things to do.

1. Clean out the work bins
2. Wash down the tables
3. Clean library bins

As it turned out, there were around 30 work bins! So there was a lot of work for us to do.

When the Sprouts had finished the three items on the checklist, we didn't really see very much of a difference. Sure, the room was cleaner, but unless somebody told you we’d been cleaning, if you happened to walk into the room, you might not have noticed the difference. So we kept on cleaning.

I vacuumed the two rugs where we imagined kids sat and read and talked. And we took pillows outside and shook them as a way of cleaning them in the fresh air.

We also organized the really messy coatroom, where it looked like everything that did not have another home ended up being tossed. And we washed some of the windows and the whiteboard, and we swept the hardwood floors with a broom and cleaned things out from underneath tables.

When our work was done, even we were shocked at how different the classroom looked. We wished we could be there to see the teacher’s and students’ reaction when they walked in the next morning.

Want to see us cleaning the classroom? Click on this YouTube link and you can watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETzTYljEUw&feature=channel_page

Just as we were preparing to leave, a man walked into the classroom, and then walked back out. Then, with a confused expression, he walked back in. It turns out that this man is the teacher in Room 206. He introduced himself as Nakia, and told us when he first walked in, he thought it was the wrong classroom... that’s how different it looked! It was a really special moment, and seeing his reaction and meeting him made all of our effort worth all our time we’d devoted to doing such a good job.

All of us hope that someday soon we can return to the Mission Hill School and help out again.

Other Projects at Mission Hill School

It was also a lot of fun to meet other Roots & Shoots kids who were there that day. All of us had a chance to eat lunch together and we went around in a circle and each of talked about what we liked about being involved with community service. Everyone talked about how much fun they were having and how good it felt to be helping other people.

We also had a chance to see some of the other projects -- like the ones where kids were making signs about conserving water to be put in the restrooms throughout the school. Some other kids were writing short messages about ways kids can easily -- in 5 minutes -- make a real difference in saving the planet's resources and energy.

You can see some examples of the pictures and signs they were making in the photographs, below, and listen to a video (click on the link that follows) of the Northeastern students who organized the day talking about some of the cool projects that happened at the school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhrcEhEnL2s&feature=channel_page

The Sprouts of Hope: Getting Rid of Wasteful Energy Use

Tracking Energy – So We Use Less of It

The Sprouts of Hope welcomed 2009 with a new project, one that we will feature at the Cambridge Science Festival in our presentation on Saturday, April 25. This will be the third year the Sprouts will have had an exhibit as part of the festival's opening day activities. Plan on coming that day and visiting with us and seeing all of the other cool exhibits, too. http://web.mit.edu/museum/programs/festival.html.

Our project is about using in-the-home digital technology to tell us how much energy we are using. These simple-to-use tools can show us not only how much power we are using but how much it is costing us --and by knowing this information we can figure out ways to reduce both. We are doing this project in partnership with NStar; this is the first time that NStar has trained any kids in how to use the combination of Power Cost Monitors – we like to call them “Smart Meters” -- and Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitors. (If we do a good job using these tools, then they hope to do a lot of other trainings with kids, so we really hope this works so everyone can learn more about energy use and have fun doing it.)

We learned how to do this when we went to NStar on January 2nd – a visit arranged for us by Mary McCarthy, NStar’s Residential Program Manager, and David MacLellan, who is the technical expert.

He explained how to use the tools they were giving us. Listen to our training on this YouTube video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBomVN3D2wE&feature=channel_page

He and Mary also gave us good suggestions about

various things we can do in our homes to try to reduce the amount of energy we use. For example, do you know that it ALWAYS makes sense to turn lights off when you leave a room, no matter how long you are going to be away from it? And shutting down computers when you are through using them is a good idea, too.

Here is a link to a short video that tells you how to install and use a Power Cost Monitor:

http://dom.com/media/video/powercost/index.html

One of the Sprouts decided to write about the ways her family is planning to make small changes in their home so, as a family, they can be more energy efficient. And they will use these tools we got from NStar to see if their changes make a positive difference.

By Eliza

My family is taking part in the Sprouts Energy Efficiency project. This means that we will have to make changes in our daily lives to conserve energy. First we set up the two meters. Part of the Smart Meter goes around our electric meter outside and the other part, which tells us what is happening with our energy use, stays inside. (I'm showing you pictures of the two parts of the Smart Meter here.) The Kill A Watt one always stays inside and we plug things into it to get readings on energy use. After we did this, my mom and dad and two brothers and I had a meeting about all the different ways we could conserve energy.

I found out that we already had Energy Star kitchen appliances, such as our dishwasher, which meant we are conserving a lot of energy in our kitchen. We also have a basement freezer and it wastes a lot of energy. My parents will be looking into ways to either get rid of our basement freezer or use it in a more energy efficient way. Same with our dehumidifier that is in the basement too. Even though it is a crucial device to prevent things like mold, it consumes a lot of energy. Most dehumidifiers are turned on 24 hours a day, every day, and the cost really adds up on our energy bill. We will be looking into Energy Star dehumidifiers because we’d like to save all that energy!

Washing machines and dryers also use a lot of energy. When we tested our dryer using the tools we’d been given, we found out we are paying $0.04 each hour on our energy bill (just to have it plugged in), which is still a lot. When my dad turned on the dryer, the cost went up to 32 cents per hour. As a family of five, we do laundry a lot and use both the washing machine and dryer. I know there are many families out there that wash as many clothes and even more than we do, which means everyone is using all that energy and paying all that money, too.

At the NSTAR meeting, I learned it is most energy efficient when you use settings for laundry load sizes on your washing machine and dryer. So now we always use the different settings. The best option would be to get an Energy Star (or some other eco-friendly) washing machine/dryer but since they are very expensive most families won’t be able to make that change right away.

But there is one change every family can make with light bulbs. My family is changing all of our incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). One incandescent bulb costs between $1.44 and $2.40 on each month’s energy bill; a CFL that provides the same amount of light costs between $0.38 and $0.67. I am guessing that in my house we use around 100 lights, and only some are fluorescent. Changing to CFL’s will cut down the energy we use by a lot.

Another thing we’re going to do that will make a huge impact on our energy consumption and on our monthly bill is to use power strips to plug in big energy users like TVs and computers. When you don’t use a power strip, and therefore you JUST press the “off” button on the TV or computer, it still uses electricity. For instance, without power strips the average energy bill will be almost $11.00 for the average TV and in between $5.00 and $22.00 for computers, depending on whether they are in sleep mode or not.

The Sprouts’ goal for this project is to cut down on the energy we use in our homes. This way, we can do our part in conserving the precious energy that humans waste every day and reduce our impact on harming the earth. Hopefully after my family and the rest of Sprouts of Hope try this, we’ll be able to tell others about it and they will try it, too. That is what we are planning to do at the Cambridge Science Festival, and hopefully in other ways, too. Maybe, one day, people throughout the world will be using Smart Meters and everyone will be able to easily find out how much energy they are using and then find ways to reduce. This will help protect the earth and conserve energy, things the Sprouts of Hope – and many, many others – are trying so hard to do. It only takes a few small changes to make a big difference.

Join us at the Cambridge Science Festival – in Kresge Auditorium at MIT -- on Saturday, April 25th from noon until 4:00 and find out what we learned and what you can do in your house to reduce wasteful energy use.

The Flying Peace Dove

Sprouts of Hope and Boston's First Night Activities and Parade

By Mia

On New Year’s Eve, some of the Sprouts of Hope participated in First Night activities in Boston with Roots & Shoots - New England. In the afternoon, we volunteered at the Roots & Shoots craft table inside the Hynes Auditorium, where a lot of First Night events happen for families during the day. There we helped kids make Peace Doves and write or draw cards with messages of peace for children in Baghdad, Iraq and Nairobi, Kenya. We also cut out the two sides of each Peace Dove after the kids colored them and a paper olive branch and then we assembled the doves on wooden sticks. All the cutting was a little tiring, but it was fun seeing how happy the kids were with their finished Peace Doves or “birds on a stick,” as somebody called them.

You can watch a video of us and the kids making Peace Doves by clicking here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz9K_69U7gc

What we did in the afternoon led up to what we were hoping to do in the big annual First Night parade that Roots & Shoots was going to be a part of. In the parade, we’d carry two giant Peace Doves that others Roots & Shoots kids had helped to make. But with lots of snow and gusty winds and a really cold temperature, we weren’t sure there would be a parade. By late afternoon, the decision was made to go ahead with the parade, and so we put on the layers of clothing we’d brought and got ready to head outside.

We had a banner with the words “Roots & Shoots” and the two big Peace Doves with wings that normally would flap in the wind. I was very excited as we stood getting ready to walk in the parade that would take us up Boylston Street to the Boston Common. A Procession Marshal put Roots & Shoots - New England between a marching band, playing songs like Yankee Doodle real loudly, and kids and grown-ups in an open air circus who were dressed in crazy costumes. Though it was freezing, really cold, and snowing, we could see lots of people looking down from windows of the Hynes Auditorium and waving to us, and ahead of us the streets were lined with people dancing, cheering and blowing horns.

We started marching and the doves looked great blowing in the wind with our banner in front of them. But pretty soon I looked next to me and saw the dove head flying in the wind without the body. We paused to try to put it back on, but the wind was just too strong.

If you want to watch the Peace Dove's head fly off and follow us as we continue marching in the parade, you can watch us on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_rF5lRuiw

By the time we’d walked a few blocks, the wind had broken both doves and all we had left was the Roots & Shoots banner and the poles and sheets used to make the doves.

And we had the wire basket shaped like a dove’s head that had once been its face. Kaya carried all of this for the rest of the parade. This was all that was left of the doves. But we marched on, holding on to our banner that also blew in the wind. And we had lots of fun anyway. It was a great New Years Eve!