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Fall is finally peeking its head around the corner of summer.  Soon, we’ll all benefit from the use of a sweater, our days are becoming shorter, and we’ve sent our children off to school.  Does this mean that your Clean & Green season is over?

Hardly.

One of the tenets of our Mission at Keep Virginia Beautiful is education, and schools around the Commonwealth do a great deal to make us proud.  The Sierra Club releases an annual ranking of the Greenest Schools in America, and we were proud to see Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University, The University of Richmond, and The University of Virginia all gathered in the top 100.  Sierra rated schools, not only on things like recycling and LEED certifications, but also largely on the behaviors of their students.  These schools all get it.  Green is good.

When we awarded our Thirty in 30 Grants, many of our grant winners were schools.  These schools aren’t going to use their grant money during the summer while the school is closed.  They are using it now, during classes, for enhancing the education of their students.  And the programs they’re using educate our next generation of conservationists in a variety of ways:

• Churchill Road Elementary school in McLean is going to build on an already successful program to recycle more and expand their composting efforts, with the goal of becoming zero-waste.
• Bon Air Elementary School in Chesterfield is gathering supplies for a stream cleanup near the school grounds.
• Patrick Springs Primary is located in a rural area where 60% of the residents live in poverty, and they’re expanding their six-year old community garden, teaching kids about sustainable gardening and providing much-needed fresh produce for area residents.

And it’s not just the children that are getting the education bug.

Tidewater Conservation District is using their grant money to build an education program for users of area landfills, and what you should or should not send to the dump.

Hidden Pond Nature Center in Springfield is transforming an unused part of their park into an educational wildlife habitat and native plant garden.  The whole area will become an outdoor classroom for visitors.

But winning a grant isn’t the only way to join us in educating others about our goal to Keep Virginia Beautiful.  You can do it all by yourself.

As state and federal budgets get tighter, schools and localities are forced to cinch their budget belts also.  This means fewer funds for activities, saving resources for salaries and physical maintenance.  So, more often than not, starting these sorts of programs falls upon the shoulders of people like you.  Many schools utilize the resources of parents and PTA groups to start gardens, encourage recycling, or plan a green event.  Purchasing 100 recycling bins for a school requires a big chunk of dough, but if 100 parents each bought a single bin, they could outfit a sizeable school.  A yard of mulch is a few hundred dollars, but a bag is affordable.

Making this sort of investment is often a question of time.  We’ve met many folks across Virginia who band together with their friends and neighbors to weed a garden, paint a playground, or clean a community area.  They often do this with their kids in tow, and these events are nothing if not educational for these children.  They learn the importance of keeping Virginia clean and green, how to recycle, and how a community can band together for a common good.

We hope that you’ll have an opportunity to do a bit of educating this fall.  We’d also like to hear about it!  If you find yourself participating in one of these events or projects, take a few photos.  Then share them with us.  We think Keeping Virginia Beautiful is a beautiful act of civic courage.  Catch someone doing it.