Recycling at Hopwood

The Hopwood S.A.V.E. Club members have been collecting recyclables from classrooms at school this year. The students recently volunteered their time on a Sunday to come to school and paint barrels for recycling around campus. We are hoping to receive a container soon so the recycled material can be stored and then hauled away by our trash collector.

Volunteer of the Week: First for 2007

Beverly Cabanatan is this week's Volunteer of the Week. This past Sunday's cleanup of the Navy Hill Lighthouse was her first volunteer event, but she helped us immensely by getting Saipan SDA Dental Clinic to donate dust masks and by recruiting two friends, Grant and Missy, to join us for the cleanup.

She exemplified the Beautify CNMI! spirit this week in donating what she could (her time and some supplies from her work) and by bringing two friends with her. She even took it to the next level by writing about her experience on her personal blog.

Thank you, Bev! Keep up the good work!

Volunteer of the Week

Bree Reynolds in 50 feet of water at Obyan Beach.
Bree Reynolds has been an invaluable member of Beautify CNMI! for several months. In 2006 she helped us find students to participate in stream cleanups, beach cleanups, tree plantings, and field trips (I prefer to call them outdoor classroom experiences). Oh yeah, she came along, too. She is also taking stream storm water samples with DEQ and RC&D's Stream Team.

Bree teaches at Hopwood Junior High School and at Northern Marianas College. Next year she plans to use the Micronesian Challenge as the centerpiece of her problem solving based curriculum. She is going to present the Challenge, to effectively conserve 30% of our near shore resources and 20% of our forest resources, and she is going to task the students to come up with a proposal.

I can't wait.

Bree is also building a Recycling Shed at Hopwood JHS. We need the following supplies:

• 2 pieces of plywood
• 64’ of 2”x4”
• Metal Roofing 8’x8’
• Outdoor house paint (any color)
• Paint for oil drums (recycling containers) (any color-15 drums)
• Chicken wire enough to line each drum.

We'll be looking for the supplies in the New Year, but if anyone wants to donate them now, that would be even better.

Volunteer of the Week

The We Love Saipan Network is up and running! This is due in no small part to this week's volunteer of the week, Walt Goodridge. In fact, the We Love Saipan Network was Walt's idea...and he did most of the work...and was paid a volunteer's wage to do it. That's right, he created and paid for the We Love Saipan Network and then donated it to the people of the CNMI.

A graduate of Columbia University, Jamaican-born Walt Goodridge is a former civil engineer who walked away from his career to follow his passion for music, writing, and sharing information. He has been an artist manager, record label owner, inventor, network marketer, career coach as well as a prolific poet . He is the author of 12 books including Turn Your Passion Into Profit (A Step-by-Step Guide for Transforming ANY Talent, Hobby or Product Idea into a Money-Making Venture), and creator of the long-running Life Rhyme series. Walt has written for Entrepreneur Magazine, Black Enterprise, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Essence, the Dallas Morning News, The Kip Business Report and numerous publications and popular websites. Walt offers personalized coaching and conducts workshops around the world to help others make money doing what they love!

Walt has lived on Saipan since February and has become an indispensable member of Beautify CNMI! Thank you, Walt!

Volunteer of the Week

From the Brilliant Star School Newsletter:

Over the summer, Kinney and Nava Khorram learned how to collect water samples using tools from the Stream Team. This year, one of the elementary student’s service projects will be volunteering for that group. They will be monitoring and collecting samples from designated streams in Garapan and turning those water samples in for testing at the DEQ. They will also plant trees and collect trash around our adopted streams. The Stream Team is a new volunteer organization dedicated to monitoring and improving the quality of the water flowing off the land and into the ocean around Saipan.

We have been throwing around the idea to restore the Navy Hill Lighthouse for a few months now, but we always came up with an excuse to ignore it.

Recently Nava asked her Dad to ask us to take the lighthouse on as one of our projects. He relayed her request to me over the weekend. Nava helped me collect water samples over the summer, so how could I say no?

Nava Khorram is the Beautify CNMI! volunteer of the week. Thank you, Nava, for providing the spark to get this worthy project underway. It took a kid...sorry, young adult to get us to finally do something. Now you have to prove your Volunteer of the Week status by bringing all of your classmates to the restoration event this weekend!

For those of you not on the Beautify CNMI! mailing list, this weekend we will be cleaning up garbage, clearing weeds, and possibly painting over graffiti and planting trees in the area in and around the Navy Hill Lighthouse. We will meet at the lighthouse Sunday, December 3 at 10:00 AM. The only thing you need to bring is two friends. Beautify CNMI! will provide all the tools.

Beautify CNMI! will also participate in the DEQ Cleanup Brigade at San Antonio Beach Saturday at 8:00 AM and the MOVER Garapan Tourist District Cleanup Sunday at 8:00 AM.

(If you are not on the Beautify CNMI! mailing list, please email me at angelovillagomez at gmail dot com and I will put you on.)

Volunteer of the Week

Adam Sablan is a student at San Vicente Elementary. He first volunteered with Beautify CNMI! during our first coconut planting in July. Since then he has come to at least one Beautify CNMI! volunteer event per week. Sometimes he comes to two. He usually brings his mother, Juanita, and sometimes his brother, Zach, and father, Mike, tag along.

Adam the Environmental Warrior was featured in a Saipan Tribune article on the same day as our island wide destination enhancement day, 1020 on 10/20. I made him a spear out of tangantangan a week later. I'm sure his mother appreciated it.

Even though he is only 10, Adam is a role model for anyone who wants to make this island a better place to live and visit. Great job, Adam!

Beautify CNMI! doesn't have any activities planned for this weekend, so Adam, enjoy your week off! I'll see you in December!

Our first event of the month will be the DEQ Cleanup Brigade cleanup of San Antonio Beach on Saturday, December 2 at 8:00 AM.