Update!

The school year has begun! With this comes the usual course loads and extra time commitment of all the students, but also some eager new freshman excited to joing the SFS team.

As for our summer projects:

Powershift 2013:
       We are still fundraising for powershift. There are now 9 students traveling to the conference, 6 of whom are SFS members. The other 3 are not with Jackson Hole High School. We are selling raffle tickets and recieving personal donations. The fundraising has now become an "action item" for the Teton County School Board, for which I am a student representative. In the past the board has been incredibly supportive of the actions of our club.

Water bottle project:
       Fundraising for the water bottle fillers is now underway, the local forest service is gathering funding information at this time. The process is slow, but hopefully the fillers will be installed soon.

Up and coming projects:
   
      Carbon Neutral JH:
             A post with greater detail about this project will be posted soon, but the general overview is that the local airport is the only airport in a national park, and SFS is partnering with Jonathan Schechter in order to accumulate signatures which he will present to the town council and county commision in order to turn the airport carbon neutral. If you would like to see Jonathan's article in the newspaper that mentions this project, check it out here!
                   http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?ctg=9&csfd=1

Powershift 2013!

One current project SFS is working on over the summer is fundraising for PowerShift 2013. Powershift is the largest youth-led conference on sustainability in the nation. It's in Pittsburgh from the 18th of October to the 20th.

We are planning to send 5 students and 1 chaperone to this conference. This involves raising money for plane tickets, hotel rooms, admission fees, etc. We have received a $1,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, $500 from the Rotary Club of Jackson Hole, and are being paid $500 from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole in return for assisting them in maintaining sustainability certification for the Old Bills Fun Run (That will be another post!).

Besides grants, we have been getting donations from local businesses and are hosting a raffle!

Prizes include:
 - A giant stuffed penguin from Teton Toys
 - A "Jackson Hole" sweater from Lee's Tees
 - Dinner for 2 at BettyRock
 - A $30 gift certificate to Bon Appe Thai
 - Dinner for 2 at the Bunnery
 - Lunch for 2 at the Silver Dollar Grill
 - 1 photo for up to 5 people at Old Time Photos
 - A $50 gift certificate to any restaurant in the Fine Dining Group
 - A $50 gift certificate to either Local or Trio
 - 2 bags of Jackson coffee from Cowboy Coffee

(If you would like to buy a raffle ticket - contact Karli at KarSwe@student.tcsd.org)

We have also been looking for the support of "sponsors", or people who fund a specific part of the trip. For example, one person gave us $200 to fund a hotel room for 2 nights!

Though there is a long way to go - hopefully we will be able to reach our goal!

If you want to check out PowerShift 2013 - http://www.wearepowershift.org/about

Water Bottle Filling Stations

SFS has been in the process of installing automatic water bottle filler stations in our school.

These water bottle stations are so cool! Not only do they quickly fill up your water bottle with cold, filtered water, but they have a panel on the top that shows you how many plastic water bottles you are saving by using a reusable bottle!

The fillers look like this:

We are putting these in at 6 of the 7 water fountains in Jackson Hole High School. 

Though these stations can be expensive, our goal seems to be accomplishable. We are applying for a grant through the Forest Service, who has funding for our club. Earlier in the year we did a project called "Green Schools" which basically taught our club how to monitor use in our school. This project is how we were connected with the Forest Service. The money we receive from them will cover about half of the total cost, and we will be working with JHHS principle Scott Crisp in order to fund the second half of the project. 

Be on the lookout for updates about this project! We are hoping to have these installed by the end of 2013. 

-Karli 

Picture credit: http://prairiestate.edu/sustainability/initiatives.html

Coalition Wild: Final Video!

Hello all! After lots of hard work, the final video has been turned in to the coalition wild contest! (About 10 minutes before the deadline, might I add.) If you would like to watch the video, check out our youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYccv86vydE&feature=youtu.be

Thank you for all of your support, and special thanks to the Jackson Hole Recycling Center, Energy Conservation Works, the Town of Jackson, and Jackson Hole High School.

-Karli

Coalition Wild: Editing!

After hours and hours of setting up, filming, laying out clip ideas, writing segments and questions, uploading, downloading, importing, exporting, etc., we are finally into the editing stage of the video! 

The editing is taking much longer than we had expected, but we are still making steady progress. 

To date we are about 3 minutes in, which  is only about 1/5 of the way though the video we have. After this, we are finishing with the transitions, titles, music, relevancy and more. 

With only 2 more days until we need to upload the video, club members are definitely feeling the pressure. We know that this project will be amazing once it is finished, and worth the late hours of work.

Editing screen - making progress! 

Coalition Wild: Planning and Development

The video process is underway! 

We have high hopes for our video, from creating and finishing the video all before July 1st, to filming interviews with local superstars such as Jackson Mayor Mark Barron, Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project Executive Director Shelly Simonton, the Education and Outreach Coordinator at the Recycling Center, and many more. 

If you haven't heard about SFS's video entry, check out the 'Coalition Wild: Video Contest!' Entry.

Filming is now underway, and it looks as if we're getting the hang of it! Thankfully we do have the experienced club members helping with video production. 

Mac Dukart, Education and Outreach Coordinator at the Jackson Hole Recycling Center

SFS members Elsa and Carson, setting up video equipment for interviews 

SFS President Mackenzie 

An interview with SFS member Carson

SFS Co-Vice President Elsa 

Check out the Coalition Wild website and Facebook!

Www.coalitionWILD.org

Www.facebook.com/coalitionwild

- Karli 

Coalition Wild: Video contest

New projects are up and coming for SFS! One huge project that we are in the final stages of is creating a video entry for the Coalition Wild contest. 

If you don't know what Coalition Wild is, it's basically a contest for people under the age of 30 to show their ideas on how to create a 'Wilder world'. You can enter via video, essay, poem, any medium you choose. 

SFS was contacted by Crista Valentino from the Murie Center encouraging us to enter, and we decided that the possible prize for winning is completely worth our time. 

The contest is over the first of July, and winners are announced on the 15th. Two winners are chosen and are sent on an all expense paid trip to Salamanca, Spain, to present to the 10th annual World Wilderness Congress in October of 2013. Even though we thoroughly  do not expect to win, having a video that we have made on our own, on our club, is amazing to have and share. 

We decided that the best topic we could talk about would be plastic consumption and reduction in Jackson Hole. This is because we have worked on projects such as the plastic bag project, removing plastic water bottles from the high school lunch line, to implementing the water bottle fillers on the water fountains that record the amount of plastic bottles that you are offsetting with reusable bottles. 

Because the video is due so soon, we are on a pretty tight time schedule. Luckily we have a club member, Carson, who is a very talented video producer and editor who took the job as our Director of Photography. We also have 4 club members who are part of the Digital Media and Communications class at the high school, who have experience filming, editing, and uploading videos. 

We are also going to create a kick-starter account to promote our video and hopefully raise some money to fund our projects. 

Check out the Coalition Wild Facebook page and website!! Www.facebook.com/CoalitionWILD

Www.coalitionwild.org

Check out the Murie Center!! 

Www.MurieCenter.org