TEENS EDUCATE FELLOW NEW YORKERS ABOUT THE EFFICIENCY OF CFL BULBS TO POSITIVELY IMPACT ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY.
After viewing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in March, 2006, Avery Hairston, a then 14 year old high school freshman, couldn’t stop thinking about the issues facing the environment. Soon after he saw the movie, he ran across a Starbucks ad in The New York Times that said if every person who received the newspaper switched one light bulb to a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb, it would be the equivalent of taking 89,000 cars off the road.*
Inspired by the documentary, armed with the information from the Starbucks ad, and with help from parents, friends and sponsors, Avery founded RelightNY, a program that runs on the idea that together, everyone can have a big impact by doing something small.
Avery decided he wanted to make a positive impact on the environment despite how overwhelmed he felt at the concept of global warming; so, he broke it down into something as simple as changing out a lightbulb!
Earlier this year, Avery was nominated by Julie Moriarty, Director of Curriculum
Children for Children, for the 2009 Heart of Green Local Hero Award. Following is an excerpt from Ms. Moriarty’s letter of nomination:
Avery and his Relight team quickly began educating fellow New Yorkers about their energy use one apartment at a time and to ask their neighbors to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFL bulbs. Then, they figured if they donate CFL bulbs to community members, they would draw attention to the environmental issues and at the same time, help families save money on their electric bills. In the past two years, they have raised enough money to donate 30,000 bulbs to low-income housing in each of the 5 boroughs of New York City.
Recently, Avery realized that New York City schools are filled with our littlest volunteers and could be mobilized one classroom at a time. He teamed with the Children for Children Foundation to offer a K-12 curriculum to educate students on the power of switching to CFL bulbs and the impact they can have on the earth’s environment. Kids throughout the NYC area are now able to get together with their friends and form Relight teams, and search online for a building that they can volunteer to “adopt.” Armed with the right information, they can help convince all New Yorkers to make the switch.
The greatest success, Hairston said, has been the simplest one — enabling people to make big changes in their lives through the quick changing of a light bulb.
RelightNY is a great example of individual responsibility, and collective action. It gives groups the power to self organize and achieve seemingly unachievable tasks.
And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!
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*Source: Blog post entitled Teens Inspiring Action, dated March 19, 2007, written by Bob Jeffrey, Chairman and CEO, JWT Worldwide