Shiprock Campus Celebrates Earth Day

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

 

Celebrate Earth Day by learning more about the Navajo Green Jobs Initiative and other Earth-friendly topics at Dine College!

 

Where: Dine College, Large Conference Room

When: 5pm to 7pm

What: Learning more about eco-friendly organizations while enjoying some awesome FREE food!

Brought to you by the Dine Ecology Club (DECO)

March 19, 2009 Meeting Minutes

So, for our meeting yesterday Thursday, March 19, 2009 we discussed the projects that the club would like to pursue:

• setting up a formal recycling program for Shiprock's Dine College campus--involves observing the flow of municipal waste that the college creates
• creating a "pick'n'haul" recycling program to complete the neglected recyclables storing up in campus storage
• create week-long series of events to focus on environmental awareness week

Sadly our guest speaker from the Navajo Green Jobs Initiative was not able to show...hopefully we will be able to catch them in the future (for our environmental awareness week?)

Also check out the global initiative that is Earth Hour (http://www.earthhour.org/home/). All lights out for ONE HOUR (8:30-9:30) on Saturday, March 28. 

 Thanks for everyone showing up to the meeting to hear what we had to share and consuming some awesome 5 ft. deli sandwich with us :D

Here is also a flyer for the upcoming Dooda Desert Rock event:

Guest Speaker at our Next Meeting!

Next Meeting: Thursday, March 19, 2009

Where: Either in Large Conference Room or in lobby near it

When: 12pm to 1pm

What: BlackMesa Water Coalition's presentation about the Navajo Green Jobs Initiative 

Please Plan to Come there will be food provided on behalf of DECO!

Recycling in Shiprock? Earth Day Week?

Two major projects that we have decided to work on is creating a recycling facility/program and planning for Earth Day Week activities. 

We have received word that maintenance has been throwing away recycles at the school when they used to store the recyclables until someone could take them to the recycling facilities in Farmington or Cortez. So, the DECO officers have decided that creating a program or planning for development of a recycling is one of the first priorities to tackle.

How you can help:

• research how other recycling programs work (maybe in Farmington or Cortez)
• where could we locate the program or facility?
• what should the program recycle?
• any federal/Navajo Nation policies we should know about?

 We would also like to integrate ourselves into the community by hosting Earth Day activities. Some activities we would like to host are:

• Environmental terms defined presentation (hopefully at either skool or the chapter house)
• National Bioblitz participation (24 hour monitoring of a specific area to witness the effects of climate change with other national SEEDS chapter)
• presentations
• hang out with kids at skools
• have any ideas? 

Earth Day Week is from April 16-April 22 ending on April 22, actual Earth Day.

For other projects--we were also thinking of doing some research in Monument Valley in accordance with the uranium phytoremediation site

 Possibly order SEEDS t-shirts for Earth Week

NEXT MEETING: Thursday, March 19, 2009 12 pm- 1 pm (Hopefully in large conference room w/out AISES)

If you have any suggestions, questions, comments please reply to this email address decoclubshiprock@gmail.com or

rita_white28@yahoo.com

Club's First Meeting

Our first combined meeting with AISES was on February 19, 2009. We had a awesome potluck that attracted interested as well as uninterested students. 

However during the meeting we talked about our mission to be active and educational in our community about decreasing our carbonfoot print. Some ideas in the agenda were:

• Future projects:
• Community/school-related
• A community-wide recycling day
• Possibly bring trucks from Farmington recycling to haul recyclables
• Start a student             run recyclable hauling program
• Have a reliable person take some of the college’s recyclables to Farmington or Cortez recycling facilities
• Since the college does not have enough funding to send maintenance

• Possibly adopt a highway
• Look into alternative and safer products for the school to use such as biodegradable food ware (Styrofoam does not biodegrade and releases ozone-depleting molecules into the air)
• Have sustainable luncheons to educate?
• Education
• Possibly borrow or buy own display case set to show and display information about recycling, reusing, and reducing.
• Contact Chelsey Chee of the Black Mesa Water Coalition to give a open-community presentation about Navajo Green Jobs
• Other presentations for community
• Club projects
• Work with AISES on a number of fundraisers

Some ideas that came up during the meeting (not on the agenda) were:

• Earth Day Week, a week's full of presentations and activities that are related to Earth Day in April. 
• DECO club needs faculty advisors

How to Use this Website

This blog was created to not only provide information about Dine College's Dine Ecology Club (DECO) but also provide information to help you understand the issues, ways you can help, and provide other connections for you to explore. 

As you can see the blog consists of two vertical rectangles. The rectangle on the left (lighter green) is dedicated to stories/posts/updates about the club. Whereas the rectangle on the right (darker green) has a history of blog posts, links to environmental issues on/off the Navajo Nation, food for thought (articles) links, and helpful ecological information website links.

The history of the blog posts is dedicated to archiving the posts on the blog. You can search for specific blog posts by searching by year then month and finally the link to the post. 

The links to environmental issues on/off the Navajo Nation is dedicated to providing links to official information and definitions about environmental concerns on the Navajo Nation such as overgrazing, irrigation, etc. 

The food for thought (articles) links provide news reports and articles pertaining to the environment.

Finally, the helpful ecological information website links are for organizations that are also interested in environmental issues and other aspects of preservation.  

Hopefully, this helps with your usage of the website, please if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns do not hesitate to email us at decoclubshiprock@gmail.com. 

Thanks!

Dine Ecology Club (DECO) is born.

(DECO's current officers (from left to right): Rita W., Roberta H., Dez D., and Bobby J.)

Currently the DECO club has combined with the local AISES chapter at the Shiprock campus. For now we are having combined meetings as well as fundraisers.