This is my second summer in Saint Lucia and while it doesn’t actually surprise me that pretty much everyone can spot Mary Beth and me from a mile away, I always get a kick out of hearing the kids yell at us while we’re on the road – “MARYBETH! MARYBETH! When is camp!?!”
Our goal here is to work with the communities, especially the kids, and get them excited about their environment. At Rainforest Camp, which is the last week in July, we take them to various place on the island (including the rainforest obviously, but also to see the reefs and mangroves) that they otherwise would probably not be able to visit. We show them why they should appreciate and respect their environment, then teach them the means to do so. Since we have kids from communities from all over the island, we also have them meet with their community groups to come up with ideas to keep the kids active throughout the year. And this year, I am actually moving to Saint Lucia to help them implement these ideas! (Although some of the groups have been doing a great job on their own!)
So we have excited kids, we have great community leaders, and hopefully I will be able to provide some extra resources for all of them in the next coming year. It sounds to me like it’s gonna be a pretty successful year for Caribbean SEA!
How do you measure success?
/in Camp, Rainforest Camp, st lucia/by Mary Beth SuttonThis is my second summer in Saint Lucia and while it doesn’t actually surprise me that pretty much everyone can spot Mary Beth and me from a mile away, I always get a kick out of hearing the kids yell at us while we’re on the road – “MARYBETH! MARYBETH! When is camp!?!”
Our goal here is to work with the communities, especially the kids, and get them excited about their environment. At Rainforest Camp, which is the last week in July, we take them to various place on the island (including the rainforest obviously, but also to see the reefs and mangroves) that they otherwise would probably not be able to visit. We show them why they should appreciate and respect their environment, then teach them the means to do so. Since we have kids from communities from all over the island, we also have them meet with their community groups to come up with ideas to keep the kids active throughout the year. And this year, I am actually moving to Saint Lucia to help them implement these ideas! (Although some of the groups have been doing a great job on their own!)
So we have excited kids, we have great community leaders, and hopefully I will be able to provide some extra resources for all of them in the next coming year. It sounds to me like it’s gonna be a pretty successful year for Caribbean SEA!
Domestic Water Woes
/in Clean Water, Domestic, sewage/by Mary Beth SuttonContrary to popular belief, the US is not free from the water quality problems that plague many developing nations! After a water supply breach due to extensive flooding, the city of Minot, North Dakota issued a “boil order” for all residents. Imagine how different your life would be if drinking or even using your tap water put you at serious risk for nasty infections! That was June 25, and now 3 weeks later, a large part of the city still doesn’t have safe water coming out of their faucets. You can check out what constitutes a “boil order” here. If you live somewhere you don’t have to boil your own drinking water, take a moment to send some good vibes to your local water quality department, and then enjoy a refreshing glass of agua.
Filthy Water
/in Clean Water, TED/by Mary Beth SuttonTesting all that needs to be tested….
/in Rambling/by Mary Beth SuttonSo here is the new website……and it’s in WordPress.
If you notice the URL is https://www.caribbean-sea.org. It’s been a long few months as we’ve migrated servers…email….applications and put all our “web” stuff in one spot. Email is back up and running (mostly) with a new gmail backend.
We’re also simultaneously tweeting and pushing the blog to Facebook. Please (look to your right) – Follow us!
Expect more to get posted….come back often…let us know if anything doesn’t work.
Earth Day!
/in TenneSEA/by Mary Beth SuttonThis has been a busy week for us at Caribbean SEA – it’s Earth Week! We started off the week by visiting Calvin Donaldson Elementary School on Monday and Tuesday to show the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders how their everyday actions can affect everyone in Chattanooga, the United States, and the world! They have a constructed wetland in their schoolyard that we used to talk to them about what makes it healthy and where the water comes from. Then we showed them the tributary of Chattanooga Creek that runs behind the school – it has been concreted, is covered in algae and since it floods so easily, there was trash everywhere. For each of the classes, we had the kids pick up (at least) one piece of trash (some got a little overzealous) and then they had to line up and pass each piece of trash down to the end person so they could see what would happen if everyone threw down one piece of trash. That’s always the activity that hits them the hardest I think, and they have lots of fun with it! And we do too!! This program just amped us up even more for our “Kids 4 Clean Water” camps that we are having this summer!
We’re on the news!
/in Beach Party, Clean Water/by Mary Beth SuttonCheck out our spot on WDEF for Scenic City Outdoors!
http://wdef.com/video/scenic_city_outdoors_caribbean_beach_party/02/2011
Luckily we can escape – they can’t…
/in sewage, toilets/by Mary Beth SuttonSeptember 2010 Newsletter is up!!
/in Curaçao, Newsletter, st lucia, toilets/by Mary Beth SuttonPlease check out out September 2010 Newsletter! Sorry it’s a bit late making it to the website
Caribbean Beach Party coming soon!!
/in Uncategorized/by Mary Beth SuttonCome have some fun and dream of the Caribbean!! Our Beach Party fundraiser will be at the Mill in the southside this year…with the rocking tunes of Milele Roots! We are also working on our new website…so have some patience with us as we transfer and change things. yikes!
A look at the Hurricane through another’s eyes
/in Uncategorized/by Mary Beth Suttonhttp://hurricane-soforthilfe-st-lucia.blog.de
Take a look at Sven Homscheid’s blog about the aftermath of hurricane Tomas on St Lucia. He works for GTZ on renewable energy projects in the eastern Caribbean. The kids did get back to school last week across the island. There are still many areas with out water, however.
This week, our amazing volunteer, Jonathan Vickery, is back at Mr Elie’s farm in Mabouya Valley working on a redesign for the biodigester cover. Mr Elie’s farm was spared much damage from the hurricane. We have another digester design we also will try, thanks to Sven!