Claes Nobel: "Celebrate Earth Day Every Day."
Claes Nobel, of the Nobel Prize family and Co-founder of NSHSS, was a passionate advocate for environmental causes. In fact, his favorite greeting was “Good Earth to you!" He encouraged all of us to treat every day as if it were Earth Day by taking action and doing our part to preserve, protect, and tend to this wonderful planet we call home. Watch the video for Mr. Nobel's special message.
Elevate your passion for climate action and environmental stewardship with the following scholarships:
- NSHSS Foundation Earth Day Awards: Check out scholarship winners who are creating sustainable initiatives in their communities.
We also have a number of other scholarships that may apply to your passions.
NSHSS hosted a virtual panel with three NSHSS scholarship winners that was moderated by Captain Planet! Each student panelist shared their creative solutions to the environmental issues in their communities and the globe!
Earth Day Is Every Day Virtual Panel
NSHSS also hosted a virtual screening of the documentary film “I Am Greta” followed by an intergenerational conversation between climate activists, scholars, and educators. Click the link to read about the panelists and view the event recording!
MIN-HUA TSOU: Captain Planet Earth Day Award Recipient
- Min-Hua was determined to find an environmentally viable alternative to conventional treatments that can remove heavy metals and toxic organic compounds from wastewater while utilizing its nutrients for the production of valuable biofuels. After countless hours of trials and experiments, Min-Hua found out that mass microalgae culture in wastewater offers an alternative tertiary biotreatment along with the production of potentially valuable biofuels. She spent days after school synthesizing and testing different nanoparticle solutions in the laboratory to engineer a system that placed spheroidal silver nanoparticles around microalgal culture flasks to increase the the formation of photopigments in algal cells using the backscattering in the spectral regions favorable for microalgal growth. Through countless hours of trying and retrying, Min-Hua faced multiple errors and challenges, inconsistent results, experimental errors but eventually her system offered a sustainable way to clean wastewater while producing useful biofuels- a step towards a cleaner and healthier Earth.
Ethan Wilk: NSHSS Foundation Earth Day Scholarship Recipient
- Ethan Wilk is a Junior from BASIS Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona. Since middle school, Ethan has had a fascination for both environmental sustainability and advanced technology. In high school, having volunteered for local organizations around his community for years, he realized a unique technological application that could solve a plethora of problems for the community: the fusion between blockchain and marine sustainability research. Inspired to get to work, Ethan contacted professors at universities around his state and engineered a fingertip-sized computer chip that could accurately and efficiently relay vital information about the fish in his lakes from miles away. With these chips, Ethan registered the 501(c)(3) organization The Xenia Project , which has garnered over 500 volunteers from his community to help him conduct his work, 37 of which have come from his own high school. Ethan has also partnered his nonprofit with the World Wildlife Fund, hoping to expand to the international hub of biodiversity: Australia.
Vennela Gosukonda: NSHSS Foundation Earth Day Recipient
- Vennela Gosukonda studies Business Administration with a concentration in finance. While pursuing her education, Vennela wants to be an active part of the student body on campus, raising awareness about climate change and educating those around her about how even the smallest lifestyle changes can have great impact on our natural world.
Learn more about our outstanding scholarship winners and their efforts to preserve our beautiful planet by clicking here.
Shawna Rogers, NSHSS lifetime member since 2010
- "I saw the plastics problem up-close-and-personal every day working retail, and I felt called to make a career change that aligned with my love and respect for our planet. In February 2018, I landed at the CCOF Foundation, a 501c(3) nonprofit that supports organic farmers and students across the United States. Every day, my team and I fundraise and plan events to raise awareness about the pivotal role agriculture plays in climate change, pollution, and human health. Organic farmers (and biodynamic, regenerative organic farmers) face monumental challenges in getting consumers to understand their methodologies."
NSHSS Partner Outward Bound Costa Rica, has a number of environmentally-focused blogs to check out!
- Brick by Brick: Helping the Environment at Home
- Five Environment Saving Tricks
- Celebrating Earth Day in Costa Rica
United Planet also has many blogs, resources, and opportunities for students wishing to make a positive environmental impact on the planet!
The Intern Group connects young, ambitious candidates to unique global internships designed to help them realize their potential prepare them for the professional world.
The Can You Hear Us? campaign was launched surrounding Hulu’s Original Documentary I Am Greta and focuses on local and community-led climate action efforts that are intersectional, intergenerational, and accessible. The campaign aims to inspire collaborative and intergenerational climate action, highlight the incredible individuals and organizations who are working to save the planet, and provide guidance and resources to encourage participation on a larger scale.
Check out the following resources from the CYHU campaign below:
- Their Take Action Guide, which was formulated to help educate and guide those interested in getting involved in the climate movement
- Their guide to having effective intergenerational conversations, which was created to help ignite effective dialogue among those with different generational, cultural, and educational backgrounds
- Explore this map of local organizations to find incredible climate groups who you can join and support in your communities
Dive into their Educators Toolkit, which was created to help introduce climate literacy in the classroom & provide direct actions for educators and students.
The climate crisis is the greatest challenge facing humanity, and young people all over the world have stepped up to demand action on climate for a better future. The Climate Museum’s mission is to inspire action on the climate crisis with programming across the arts and sciences that deepens understanding, builds connections, and advances just solutions. NSHSS recognizes how pivotal confronting the climate crisis is to world betterment, and has partnered with The Climate Museum to offer education and advocacy tools for students in this Climate Action Toolkit:
- Climate Art for Congress: Be a climate advocate! Make your voice heard and communicate with elected representatives on climate change through your art and letters.
- Climate Ambassador Card: 66% of Americans are worried but inactive about climate change. Experts agree that talking about climate issues is an important action toward a climate-safe future. This is a printable pocket-sized card to help you start climate conversations in your community.
These Sustainability Initiatives Earned a $10,000 Grant
Chase Hartman
Eco Brothers "read.repeat" Initiative
Sixteen-year-old Chase Hartman co-founded a non-profit called Eco Brothers and an award-winning book distribution project called “read.repeat.” and has been focused on improving literacy rates and helping the environment for the past 6 years. He’s collected and distributed more than 200,000 books and impacted the lives of more than 45,000 students in Hillsborough County, Florida. Chase champions the need for more books-with-diversity and dual language books in local Title-1 schools and has worked to raise more than $110,000 to support this cause as well as various environmental projects. Chase is an Eagle Scout and Vice President of Student Government at Sickles High School in Tampa, Florida. His community service efforts have been recognized by the following awards: the Tampa Bay Lightning Hockey Team Community Hero of Tomorrow award, Florida’s Prudential Spirit of the Community honoree, and the EPA’s President’s Environmental Youth Award winner. He serves on the Points of Light Youth Council promoting volunteerism to young people across the country. Chase’s goals are to continue competing in swimming at the collegiate level and earn bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and Psychology. Learn more at www.ecobrothersinc.org.
Niveda Mahesh
4Girls 4Change
Niveda Mahesh is a high school senior attending Woodbridge Senior High School in Woodbridge, VA. She is a three-sport varsity athlete in rowing, field hockey, and basketball. If not competing on the water, field, or court, she loves strength training at her local gym. She is a passionate leader in her school and community. She is currently the President of her school’s National Honor Society. As the Founder and President of her nonprofit organization – 4Girls 4Change (www.4G4C.org) since February 2021, she has helped raise over $18,000 to support several ongoing projects in her local community. Today, these projects support a wide range of beneficial community related activities, including – homeless shelter and support services, food donation drives, COVID-19 relief efforts, and clothing drives for Afghan refugees. Niveda has also been an active Girl Scout since third grade. In August 2022, she won the most prestigious Gold Award for her “Reducing Food Wastage in Local Restaurants” project. She is a passionate environmentalist at heart and plans to major in college in environmental science, with a focus on policy, governance, and sustainability. Her long-term goal is to become the Chief Sustainability Officer of a socially responsible and earth-centric company.
Jiya Gupta
Farmoid
Jiya Gupta is a high school senior from California. As an aspiring tech entrepreneur, Jiya founded Farmoid. Farmoid is a company dedicated to increasing yield and decreasing water wastage of small farmers, the farming industry’s most ignored yet prominent food suppliers. Farmoid provides small farmers with a system of sensors that measure soil conditions and provide farmers with digested feedback to tackle farming inefficiencies. With NSHSS’s seed funding, Farmoid moves one step closer to its goal of stabilizing the food supply worldwide!
Emily Huffstetler
Build for Bees
Three summers ago, the news was reporting that one-third of our honey bees had died in the past year. Some sources were saying that it was closer to 40%. As I considered these issues, I realized a solution might already live in my backyard. Mason bees are solitary, so they aren’t likely to sting, and raising them takes hardly any work. All you have to do is build a house for them. These amazing bees pollinate 95% of the flowers they visit, as opposed to the 5% honey bees pollinate. To share this knowledge with my community, I founded Build for Bees in 2018. My goal was to lead workshops to teach others how to build mason bee houses. Learn more at https://build4bees.com
Genevieve Jean-Pierre
Cellobiase Production in Pleurotus Fungi
The Future is Fungi exploits the efficiency of a certain pink oyster mushroom in converting cellulose into glucose that can then be used to produce biofuels—a broadly overlooked source of sustainable fuel. An added benefit of my concept is that it provides organic produce for the community while also reusing and harnessing waste material to be used as raw material for biofuel production. I will use the grant money to cultivate more mushrooms, continue experiments to prove the most efficient pathways, and build a relationship with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to begin supplying ethanol to gas stations in Tennessee.
Eshani Jha
Aqua Universa
Water contamination remains a key challenge of modern civilization. We have been able to design an efficient, sustainable, and affordable filtration material for the rapid removal of these contaminants from water. Integrating engineering with environmental chemistry, a filter capitalizing on biochar properties can be created for worldwide distribution at a cost of fewer than twenty cents per month for use in homes, rural, urban and industrial settings, agriculture, and aquatic ecosystems. Learn more at https://aquauniversa.webnode.com/
Candace Printz
Founder, Green Hope Project
GREEN HOPE PROJECT is a nonprofit that began in 2019 born out of the desire to continue with, and improve upon, what It's Your World Project began in 2015. It’s Your World Project is a high school art/environmental group in El Paso, Texas. Our focuses include environmentalism, the Arts, and education. We believe that we can make a positive change by uniting in our efforts, identifying environmental problems, and changing our collective culture through the Arts and education. The more we offer people experiences, the more they become enlightened and empowered to be the change we need. What better way to do this than through the Arts? Learn more at https://www.greenhopeproject.org
Haji Ali
Well in Ethiopia
My idea for this project evolved when I was in tenth grade. My biology teacher suggested I write a paper on water insecurity in Ethiopia for the World Food Prize. This would be easy for me. I didn’t have to do much research because I had experienced it first hand. After presenting my paper, I became a Norman Borlaug scholar. This was where my dream for the project began. I would build a well on my family’s farm in Ethiopia and turn it over to the community. The money given to me by my church and the community of Cedar Rapids, along with online fundraising, allowed me to return to Ethiopia to start the project on my family’s land. The project is now well-underway.