Sprouts of Hope Quilt Project

Creating Self-Portraits

By Risa

On March 18th, the Sprouts of Hope visited Clara's studio to make self-portraits for our quilt. We first picked our skin colors. All the fabric choices were exaggerated so some of our faces were tan and some were pink.

We cut out our faces by folding the fabric in half and cutting half-circles, looking in the mirror to determine our face shapes. The most fun part was probably the hair. We picked fabric with curls, lines and other shapes depending on our hair texture and then we cut and styled it.

After hair, we added facial features. Our noses were cut out of the same fabric as the rest of our faces, but we were more creative with eyes and lips.

The more features that each of us added to our portraits the more these pieces of cloth started to look like us. It is easy to tell who is who even though the faces are not as detailed as a drawing or photo would be.

We added accessories such as earrings and necklaces to distinguish ourselves even more. After cutting and laying out the portraits, we glued them down and gave them to Clara, who is going to sew them.

Creating our self-portraits was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot, while giving each other advice!

Sprouts of Hope's Quilt Project

Making Sustainability Visual

By Maya

What better way to spread a message than by quilt? In early March, the Sprouts of Hope had the pleasure of visiting the wonderful studio of quilt maker, Clara Wainwright. It’s in Allston, which is just across the river from where we live in Cambridge, and it’s a place we are going to return to many times as Clara helps us make a quilt about sustainability.

After standing in awe of her endless yards of beautiful cloth, we sat down to discuss our ideas. Our plan is to lend this quilt to people and places that are engaged in projects, conversations or activities about environmental sustainability so they can convey a visual message as they act in sustainable ways to help the Earth.

Initially we had drawn a basic outline for the quilt and devised a list of local people to go to for inspiration and ideas —such as our Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis. She has chaired the city’s environment committee and has been a great friend to the Sprouts.

Here's a picture of Henrietta when she came to the launch of our book, Energy Lite, and its companion Kill A Meter at the Cambridge Public Library. Thanks, Henrietta!

We want to talk again with Kristen van Hoffmann, who is the Cambridge Public School’s Sustainability Manager. It's been great to see all she is doing to make our schools more energy efficient and help all of the students to learn keeping our planet sustainable. And we hope to get ideas from other Roots & Shoots members in New England.

When Clara got us talking about ways to think about and design our quilt, we realized the many possibilities we have for displaying sustainability. We can use portraits of people who are doing things to support sustainability, and symbols, words, color, and composition. We can go local. Or we can go global. Or we can do both. As we talked with Clara, we asked ourselves, “What is sustainability?” One reoccurring idea was that it is the notion of preserving resources through multiple generations as we pass on and share knowledge.

To ignite our imaginations, Clara had us make mandalas. These are concentric visual diagrams (like this one) that have spiritual and ritual significance in Buddhism and Hinduism. Mandalas start out with a simple circle inside a square. To make ours, Clara had us cut various shapes out of colorful pieces of cloth and set them down on the mandala in a symmetrical design. For us, the mandala would become our personal interpretation what it means to sustain the Earth.

We made two mandalas —separated by a conversations we had about our project. We made the first one before we talked about sustainability, then the other one after we did. It was interesting to see how our discussions influenced each of our designs.

Our first mandala seemed more general.

Our second one honed in on more specific ideas.

Making these mandalas showed us how challenging it will be to choose which images will best convey the messages we want our quilt to convey. At our next meeting the plan is to start our quilt by making self-portraits to sew into its border. We plan on talking with the people we had on our list — and likely adding more people to our list. This way, we’ll be able to create more portraits for the border. And we are working to come up with four environmental leaders whose portraits we are likely to put in the quilt’s four corners.

If you have ideas for who those people should be, please let us know.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this collaboration comes together as a quilt.

Cradles to Crayons: Volunteering to Help Other Kids

By Eliza

Just before Risa and I joined the other Sprouts at Clara Wainwright’s studio, we volunteered at Cradles to Crayons in nearby Brighton. It is an organization that provides homeless kids and those from low-income families in Boston with all kinds of things, including clothes, toys, books, and school supplies. These are things kids need, and receiving a package from Cradles to Crayons is one of those happy moments in a kid’s life.

While we were there, we helped sort donated items that would then be packaged and shipped to kids. We were in charge of sorting through clothing for little kids and making sure that all of the donations were of good quality.

We had a blast and it is definitely something that we would like to do again! Find out more at http://cradlestocrayons.org/

Making Cambridge Schools Sustainable


By Eliza

Through the years the Sprouts of Hope have worked on many sustainability projects in the Cambridge public schools —at King Open, our K-8 school, and now in high school, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). When we were in elementary school, we went before the school committee to let them know why they should get rid of the cafeteria's polystyrene food trays. After our second time testifying about this problem, the school committee voted for the school district to investigate this problem and that led to us working with school district officials to implement composting in our cafeteria.

King Open became the composting pilot program that other schools in the district are adopting. The Sprouts of Hope also introduced the idea of waste free lunches at King Open.

Many other individuals and groups have been a part of this same effort to improve sustainability in Cambridge. Meryl Brott, the Recycling Program Manager for the City of Cambridge at the Department of Public Works, helped us to start the compost program at King Open and has championed its movement into other schools. We are so happy to discover that she just received the The Green Hero honor from the Cambridge School District for the months of January/February 2012.

Here's a slideshow Meryl created to show why and how schools set up their composting programs.

Our high school’s environmental action club, which a few of the Sprouts recently joined, is also active in making a positive difference in our school's sustainability. During the last two years our entire high school was rebuilt in a "green way" and will be LEED certified. There are eco-friendly improvements still taking place — by students and teachers —to make what goes on in the high school more energy efficient, eco-friendly and sustainable.

One great thing the school district did was to hire Kristen Von Hoffmann to be its first sustainability coordinator. We've met with Kristen (she's sitting in the middle of us in the photo below) to talk about her initiatives and we want to help her to engage more students in getting involved in supporting her efforts. And she's clearly doing a good job!

According to the Fall 2011 Recycling Summary published by the Cambridge Department of Public Works, the Cambridge Public Schools recycled 82.8 tons (165,648 pounds) of waste during the first semester of school. In fact, in December 2011 alone, 41,062 pounds of waste were recycled. On average, that is around 7.5 pounds per student! Most schools are even taking part in a recycling competition to see which school can recycle the most waste.

Recycling is clearly a main focus of sustainability in the Cambridge Public Schools, but progress with composting is happening, too, thanks to Meryl's efforts. Cambridgeport, a K-8 school in our district, recently began composting and our high school begins composting in April. When that happens, five of the district's schools will be doing school-wide composting in their cafeterias!

Water is another focus of improving sustainability. In the high school's cafeteria, we have new water dispensers where students fill up their reusable water bottles for free instead of buying bottled water. In fact, our cafeteria no longer offers bottled water! Additionally, CRLS is trying to reduce its carbon footprint. Take a look at how we are partnering with NSTAR to try to save energy in our school:

It makes us so happy to know that so many people are working on the issue of sustainability in our schools. We hope a lot of students will get involved and help. If you want to find out what you can do, then email Kristen Von Hoffmann, the Cambridge Sustainability Coordinator, at Kvonhoffmann@cpsd.us.

Inviting You to Help Chimps in Tchimpounga

Through Roots & Shoots we've learned a lot about chimpanzees and their habitat, and we've come to love them and want to do what we can to protect them. So when we learned about a fire at a chimpanzee sanctuary where these remarkable animals are watched over, we knew we wanted to help. This letter is our way of reaching out and inviting you to join us in this effort.

Dear Family and Friends,

We are writing to you as members of Dr. Jane Goodall’s Youth Leadership Council. As you may know, Dr. Jane has focused much of her career in the primatology field, working to protect chimpanzees and their habitat in Africa. In the capacity of youth leaders and council members, we wanted to let you know about the recent forest fire at the Jane Goodall Institute’s chimpanzee sanctuary and ask for your support in rebuilding this refuge.

We are involved in the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) through Roots & Shoots, Dr. Jane’s international youth leadership and community service organization. Another program that is run by JGI supports orphaned and endangered chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo. This chimpanzee rehabilitation center, Tchimpounga, is the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world, and provides a much-needed refuge for chimps who have been terrorized by the illegal bushmeat trade.

Watch a short video about a day in the life of chimps at Tchimpounga.

Recently, a wildfire struck Tchimpounga and destroyed much of the sanctuary and protected chimpanzee habitat. Fortunately, no chimpanzees or staff members were harmed in the fire. However, unless the Jane Goodall Institute can raise enough money to repair the damage done in the fire, these chimpanzees will have nowhere to go where they will be safe from poachers. Additionally, many of these baby chimps are orphans and are incapable of living by themselves in unprotected forests.

Please consider making a donation to support the rebuilding of Tchimpounga. Donations of any size can be made online at https://www.janegoodall.org or can be sent to 20 Stearns Street, Cambridge MA 02138, c/o Eliza Klein. Contributions are tax deductible and checks can be made out to Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center. If you are interested in reading about our work with Dr. Jane and in Roots & Shoots, check out www.roots&shoots.org. Or, if you have any particular questions, please e-mail us at sproutsofhopekids@gmail.com.

Wishing you a happy and healthy new year,

Eliza Klein and Maya Ludtke

Northeast Youth Leadership Council

Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall Institute

Sprouts: Energy Lite at the Northeast Youth Summit

By Lilly

During the three-day weekend of Veterans Day, the Sprouts of Hope had the incredible opportunity to join in a day of activities and workshops with other groups at the Northeast Regional Roots & Shoots Youth Summit. In other years we’ve attended this magnificent event in Boston, but this time it was held in New York City, so we went to the city that never sleeps.

At the summit, the Sprouts of Hope presented a workshop about our book, "Energy Lite" and how it works in libraries for kids and families to borrow along with a Kill A Watt meter.

We began by introducing the members of our Roots & Shoots group — from left to right, Eliza, Lilly, Risa, Maya and Kaya.

Then we explained how we became interested in Kill-A-Watt meters and now they can measure the energy that our household appliances use. We told those who came to our workshop about our partnership with N-Star — when we tried out Smart Meters to measure energy use throughout our homes — and how they also gave us Kill-A-Watt meters to use.

Next, we explained how we put our book together — from coming up with ideas for what we’d write about to outlining it on index cards to writing its various sections. We shared the story of how we managed to get our book and Kill A Meters into public libraries in Cambridge, Boston, Medford, MA and Central Falls, Rhode Island; this is which is an ongoing project of ours and we are going to raise by crowdfunding online so we can get our book and a meter into all of the 370 public libraries in Massachusetts.

We used Kill-A-Watt meters to show how much energy three different light bulbs use — incandescent (they use the most), CFLs (less than incandescent) and LEDs (that use a lot less than even CFLs). We also showed how much energy a hairdryer uses. The answer: a lot, especially when turned on high — so try to let your hair dry naturally.

In our presentations about “Energy Lite,” we share information about energy use — and how to conserve use of it, but we also want to pass along a message that can help kids to make their ideas turn into real projects that make a difference in other people's lives. So we pass along our motto of the 3P’s — Partners, Patience and Persistence. These are the three things we keep in mind as we work to make our projects successful.

We told those who came to our workshop about our partners — our local utility, NStar, P3, the company that makes Kill A Watt meters and donated 20 of their meters to the Cambridge Public Library when we gave the library our book, and Shonak Patal, who created a local website called Swellr and came to talk with us about crowdfunding our project. We are grateful to all of them for their support and encouragement.

Our experience in working with our local library spoke to the value of partnerships in making big projects happen and about the patience and persistence that will be required of us as we try to raise money in the spring to make “Energy Lite” and Kill A Watt Meters an item that families can borrow from their local libraries across our state.

We hope people left our workshop with a better idea of how to take action. Those who came to it were very enthusiastic in what we are doing and showed a lot of interest in our book. One teacher took a copy to put into the library at her school, and two New Yorkers expressed an interest in getting our book into New York public libraries. Overall, we thought the workshop went very well and it was a great experience.

Sprouts: Stories About Chimpanzees

By Kaya

Have you ever watched a commercial with an adorable chimpanzee grinning happily and using the company’s product surprisingly well? Little do you know that this chimp is not smiling but is actually wearing a look filled entirely of fright. What looks like a smile to us is really a grimace of terror for chimpanzees.

Our lead off speaker at the Northeast Regional Youth Summit was Bill Wallauer, who shared with us his experiences of shooting video of the chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. He went to Tanzania 15 years ago and for all of the years as worked closely with Dr. Jane Goodall to record the lives of the chimps. He shared a horrible, yet moving, story of Lulu, a chimpanzee who was taken from her natural habitat and forced to act in commercials.

While thousands of people watched the harmless—or so they thought—commercial, poor Lulu was getting beaten for every little mistake she made —forgetting to walk around at the right moment, messing up her cue to dance, there was a punishment for everything.

A few months later, Lulu was found dead in a trash can, her body bruised and broken from the harsh treatment of her “owners.”

Hearing about such cruel treatment of these remarkable animals made the Roots & Shoots kids in the audience react with a long silence. How else could you react when you truly understood the story behind the chimpanzee advertisements you can see online or on television? Who knew those baby chimps were terrified and grimacing as they were forced to apply a fake smile on their faces?

From this opening talk — and from the summit workshops — I took home some important knowledge. The main reasons for the decrease in the population of chimpanzees include global warming and the depletion of their natural habitat, along with bush meat trade. Watch this video about what humans are doing to harm the chimpanzees.

But chimpanzees are also endangered when people “innocently” claim and force chimps out of their natural habitats and whip them into becoming the pets or performers they want them to be.The fact that people could knowingly kill an innocent chimpanzee makes me furious. An estimated 6,000 chimpanzees are slaughtered each year, mainly due to the bushmeat trade. But they also die when people take these innocent chimps out of their natural habitat—only to kill them later when they get bored and tired of the responsibility of taking care of them.

Chimpanzees have not captured us to control and then kill us, so why are we displaying such disgusting treatment towards them?

Leadership: Teaching, Learning, Sharing

By Maya

In the second time slot of the summit, the New England Youth Leadership Council members—including Eliza and me—helped run a workshop on youth leadership. There was a great turnout with many more people than we expected.

To break the ice, we started out with a fun game of Ninja. After loosening up we gave a short overview of what we were going to do. To begin, we talked about the “leadership compass.” It displays four different styles of leadership, using the directions of north, south, east and west. I am west—analysis, and Eliza is east—vision.

Find out what kind of leader you are by looking at the 4 major leadership styles, below.

Each person chose the style that suited him or her best. It was fascinating to find out the amount of diversity in leadership styles in just one room. When we divided ourselves into groups — based on our style, we discussed the qualities and aspects of how we lead. This activity gave people a chance to analyze themselves as leaders and discover how they best interact with other leaders.

As a small challenge each group also had to write a haiku describing their direction. After this exercise, the youth leaders talked a bit about what it means to be one as well as some of the things we have all taken away from the experience.

Anyone would be able to see how dedicated we are to the job of being a youth leader and how we have formed unbreakable bonds with one another; we are truly able to understand and relate to one another.

The workshop went extremely well. Everyone worked hard, yet it felt very relaxed and comfortable. Since the workshop happened, some participants have contacted me about thinking of joining the council. Out of the whole day of activities, the youth leadership workshop was probably my favorite!

Here is a photo of the Youth Council Leaders who were at this regional summit. Serving on the Roots & Shoots Youth Council is a lot of fun and a great learning experience.

4 Major Leadership Styles

North: Action

• Assertive, active, decisive
• Likes to determine course of events and be in control of professional relationship
• Enjoys challenges presented by difficult situations and people
• Thinks in terms of “bottom line”
• Quick to act or decide; expresses urgency for others to take action
• Perseveres, not stopped by hearing “No,” probes and presses to get at hidden resistances
• Likes variety, novelty, new projects
• Comfortable being in front
• Values action-oriented phrases, “Do it now!”, “I’ll do it”, “What’s the bottom line?”

South: Empathy

• Understands how people need to receive information in order to act on it
• Integrates others input in determining direction of what’s happening
• Value-driven regarding aspects of professional life
• Uses professional relationships to accomplish tasks, interaction is a primary way of getting things done
• Supportive to colleagues and peers
• Willingness to trust others’ statements at face value
• Feeling-based, trusts own emotions and intuition, intuition regarded as “truth”
• Receptive to other’s ideas, builds on ideas, team player, noncompetitive
• Able to focus on the present
• Values words like “right” and “fair”

East: Vision

• Visionary who sees the big picture
• Generative and creative thinker, able to think outside the box
• Very idea-oriented; focuses on future thought
• Makes decisions by standing in the future (insight/imagination)
• Insight into mission and purpose
• Looks for overarching themes, ideas
• Adept at and enjoys problem solving
• Likes to experiment, explore
• Appreciates a lot of information
• Values words like “option,” “possibility,” “imagine”

West: Analysis

• Understands what information is needed to assist in decision making
• Seen as practical, dependable and thorough in task situations
• Provides planning and resources, is helpful to others in these ways and comes through for the team
• Moves carefully and follows procedures and guidelines
• Uses data analysis and logic to make decisions
• Weighs all sides of an issue, balanced
• Introspective, self-analytical, critical thinker
• Skilled at finding fatal flaws in an idea or project
• Maximizes existing resources - gets the most out of what has been done in the past
• Values word like “objective” “analysis”