The students and teachers involved with YES! continue to impress us! This year, 344 students from 22 YES! teams representing 48 communities participated in the YES! Program. These students worked with 1,951 local community members, businesses, and organizations to achieve their energy-related goals. The students’ energy action projects impacted an additional 9,092 students and 7,975 community members. This means that since its inception in 2007, YES! has involved 2,138 students who have worked with 3,758 local businesses, organizations and community members to impact an additional 107,612 community members and 69,719 students!
This year alone:
- YES! teams worked with 253 community members, 1,606 non-YES! students, 75 local businesses and organizations, and 17 connections from the University of Minnesota
- Teams collected and recycled over 2,000 pounds of holiday lights, 1,700 pounds of shoes, 8,000 plastic bags, and 181 cell phones
- Teams implemented 5 YES!/Earth Weeks and installed 8 hydration stations.
- Teams built 4 vehicles for the 2015 MTEEA Supermileage competition, entering in the stock, modified, E-85 and electric divisions
- 8 teams built and/or managed school gardens and greenhouses
- 8 teams participated in the World Wear Project in various capacities, many of them doing it for YES! These teams collected used shoes that will be reused and/or recycled in return for “Prairie Woods” bucks that they can use towards their YES! team fee next year. In total, they collected over 1,700 pounds of tennis shoes!
- At least 15 teams did recycling projects in their schools and communities
- 4 teams did waste or energy audits of their schools
- 4 teams worked on composting initiatives
- All YES! teams demonstrated that they were empowered to partner with their communities to create economic and environmental vitality through hands-on learning and team-based projects
