First Annual Student Congress on Sustainability

Hawai'i Preparatory Academy is sponsoring the first annual Student Congress on Sustainability for high school students. This event launches the global network being created to provide high school student environmental leaders from Hawai‘i and around the world an opportunity to collaborate on student-driven environmental initiatives. Twenty-five public, charter, parochial, and independent high schools on the Island of Hawai'i are being invited. This three-day conference will be held on the campus of Hawai'i Preparatory Academy from June 8-11, 2008. We estimate 100 students and teachers to participate at no cost to the students or to the schools.

The mission of the Student Congress on Sustainability is to celebrate, inform, and cultivate student-driven environmental initiatives addressing local, national, and global issues. By marshalling the enthusiasm, talent, and resourcefulness of young men and women, the Congress will be one means of facilitating widespread education and collaboration among high school students, serving to cultivate and shape habits of mind that will translate sustainable ideology into practice.

The Student Congress on Sustainability will include invited speakers, student presentations, discussions, workshops, and hands-on activities covering a wide range of sustainable and environmental issues, including global warming, energy conservation, wind and solar renewable energy sources, converting diesel cars to run on cooking oil, sustainable lifestyle options, recycling, and composting and organic farming. The majority of speakers and workshop facilitators will be from Hawai‘i Island, with invited speakers from mainland universities such as Yale and Cornell who have worked on the island. Existing school projects will be shared in specific poster sessions. Ten diverse school projects will be selected prior to the event to be presented to the rest of the group as model projects. Participants will connect to schools in Alaska and Germany to discuss their school projects and global issues via web-conferencing. Teachers will attend the student workshops, as well as specially designed teacher workshops, including sessions about ensuring that new environmental projects comply with state standards. An excursion to the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai‘i Authority (NELHA) is included to visit some of the sustainable businesses on the island.

The Student Congress on Sustainability is envisioned to be a proactive step toward celebrating and spreading environmental consciousness, and enabling youth-driven conservation and sustainability initiatives to spread through a global network of student-to-student collaboration.