Once Upon A Tree

Chandler Hamilton students in Eco Challenge                                                                 Hamilton sophomores competing for $30,000 prize in Eco Challenge                                                      By Kerry Fehr-Snyder, The Arizona Republic

They sold origami flowers for Valentine's Day. They are crocheting water-bottle holders and making wrap-around bracelets from soda-can tabs and other recycled items, all to be sold for their environmental project.

From February to mid-March, a team of students from Hamilton Prep in Chandler hopes to raise $1,600 to buy 1,000 tree saplings to be planted in a forest in Colorado. They also hope to purchase a webcam to monitor the saplings' growth. So far, the team has raised $120.

A lot is riding on the outcome.

The students are competing for the $30,000 grand prize in the final Lexus Eco Challenge, which began Feb. 7 and ends March 15. Their teacher hopes the competition will lead to a long-term commitment to environmental causes.

"We didn't want to be here today and gone tomorrow," said science teacher and club sponsor Raxha Bhagedev.

"What I really want is for them to capture people's imagination."

The group, which calls itself Once Upon A Tree, meets after school nearly every day. Members sat around a conference room after school on a recent Friday intently making their origami flowers, water-bottle holders and bracelets.

Students also are asking for donations which have come from Hamilton Prep teachers, staff members and others connected to the school.

The students have assigned individual tasks for their project. Akila Sivakumar is the project leader, Shannon Effle researched wireless Web cams that can withstand humidity, Melissa Dong contacted the crochet group, Cactus Stitchers, for help making the water-bottle covers. Maame Asare designed a brochure explaining the project, Jazmin Lovio is in charge of public relations and Alyson Novak is researching how to get help from environmental sponsors.

Each student has her eyes set on prestigious universities.

If they are one of four $15,000 winners, $3,000 goes to the school, $2,000 to the teacher and $10,000 to the students in college scholarships. But if they win the grand prize, they will divvy up $30,000.

The students won $10,000 in an earlier eco challenge centered on doing something for the land or water. They were one of 16 groups to win that contest.

Hamilton Prep received $2,000 of that, Bhagedev got $1,000 and the students received $1,000 each.

The students, all sophomore girls, planted seven 15-gallon trees in the Tonto National Forest east of Mesa near Goldfield to combat desertification, the degradation of land in arid or semi-arid areas, which is caused in part by the mountain pine beetle.

Their goal is to plant trees in areas in need of soil nutrients due to a lack of trees. The purpose of the trees is to reduce urban runoff and erosion by storing water and breaking the force of rain as it falls. They are also trying to reverse the effects of desertification and to restore areas damaged by the mountain pine beetle, commonly known as the bark beetle.

For the grand Eco Challenge, the students wanted to expand their project to the Grand Canyon but shifted their sites to Colorado State University because of its forestry department.

"The girls are interest in biodiversity and combating deforestation," Bhagedev said. "This started as a class project but now it's a club because the girls took on the challenge to make a difference."