The Kingswood Youth Center (KYC) in Wolfeboro, NH hosted their first annual “Clean Energy Celebration” last month on the symbolic date of Oct.19th, the 65th year anniversary for the first electricity-generating windmill ever raised in the US (Grandpa’s Knob, VT). The event was sponsored by Youth Service America and Civil Society Institute through their “Red, White, and Green” grant. This grant helps fund programs that raise awareness and increase youth participation in addressing climate change.
The 7th-12th graders helped plan the event and personally invited all local and state representatives. Youth of the Lakes Region made it clear that climate change was one of their most important issues for last Tuesday’s elections (in which we elected the first woman to ever represent NH in Congress – Democrat, Carol Shea-Porter!).
Organizations that participated in the event include, NHPIRG, Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, Clean-Air Cool-Planet, D Acres, Northeast Resource Recovery Association, KTM Auto, Sol R Heating Systems, Tasker Recycling, and Nordic Skier. Each group had a booth highlighting various ways to get involved with promoting clean energy in New England. Clean-Air Cool-Planet had their global warming petition that now, after receiving enough signatures, will be on our town warrant. Adam from Tasker Recycling gave some hopeful figures about the potential behind Wolfeboro’s recycling program.
Some activities included the “Eco-footprint Challenge” where community members could calculate their eco-footprint and learn ways to reduce it. Nordic Skier, the local bike shop, performed a free bike maintenance workshop to encourage zero-emissions transportation. Another way KYC encouraged emission free transport was by automatically entering everyone into a raffle who walked or biked to the event. Prizes included a fleece vest made from recycled plastic soda bottles.
Some of the community members noticed the smell of fastfood in the air? Wolfeboro is proud to be free from fast-food restaurants so this smell seemed a bit odd until Kevin from KTM Auto explained how he has converted over 23 vehicles to run on Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO), including the Humvee he had on display! Kevin now has a little fuel co-op in Plymouth, NH where he filters local restaurant’s waste grease and supplies his diesel customers with this 100% bio-based fuel.
The Clean Energy Celebration was a big hit and made the front page of Wolfeboro’s very own Granite State News. The Community TV also made an appearance and aired some of the highlights on Channel 26. It wasn’t Nairobi, but for this little lake town, it was quite the hoorah!
Thanks YSA, and IGHIH for making this Clean Energy Celebration a reality!
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Great to here about all the action in Wolfeboro! I worked at a youth summer camp for years and always thought there was incredible potential for youth activism in the area. Thanks for organizing such a great event that I’m sure the entire community is proud of. Way to rock on New Hampshire!
October 19th, 2004 was also the Energy Action Coalition’s first ever “Energy Independence Day,” and we had 280 student actions across the U.S. and Canada, collected over 27,000 youth signatures on our Declaration of Independence from Dirty Energy, and delivered those signatures to state capitols.
Check out the declaration we wrote over 2 years ago: http://www.energyaction.net/documents/declaration.pdf
Nice work, Josh! This is wonderful!
Hi Josh,
I read about your environmental work at a link from Clean Air Cool Planet. I teach biology and ecology at Prospect Mt. High School in Alton.
I gather that you live in Wolfeboro, NH. Would you be interested in coming to speak with my ecology class sometime this winter? The students would be inspired by your community work.
Sarah Thorne
Josh, thanks for an awesome event! Kevin and I had a great time and met some great people. You are awesome, keep up the good work!
Michelle Dunn
Wow, thanks fellas. Sarah - I’m definatley interested in speaking to your students in Alton. Send me an email at josh_arnold@riseup.net. Michelle - glad to see you are keeping up with the blog! It was also a treat to meet you and Kevin. The Benz is officially on grease now and it’s running like a champ. I just picked up 30 gallons o’ grease yesterday from my old high school biology teacher who is running his volvo on WVO. Anyway, I am still planning on a D Acres visit so maybe it can be a Winter potluck that you and Kevin also attend. Let’s stay in touch.
Josh - great to hear about such a fantastic grassroots event happening up in NH!! Looking forward to hearing about more of these types of activities in the future.
Josh, we need another class from Kevin on converting to WVO this summer. There are many interested folks in this area. Thanks for all you are doing to get the word out about the state of the environment.
great news of change going on up in NH! i grew up going to wolfeboro every summer, what a beautiful place (no fast food, great community and lake wentworth). it’s really cool to read about all of the energy and action going on there towards sustainability.
out from north carolina.