Kimball Electronics student-led council supports environmental causes
Kimball Electronics High School Student Environmental Council selects 4-H and Blue Ring for donations as part of World Environment Day
Kimball Electronics is donating $1,000 between two worthy environmental causes on behalf of Dubois County’s four high schools in conjunction with the company’s 2020 High School Student Environmental Council program.
Five hundred dollars will be donated to each cause—one local and one global in scope:
- Dubois County 4-H, a nonprofit program that serves approximately 900 youth living in Dubois County. The money will be used specifically for environmental awareness purposes, whether through education, fairground enhancements, or community service.
- Blue Ring, Inc., an ocean conservation organization based in Chicago. Founder Alex Rose was the guest speaker at last fall’s Kimball Electronics Gives Dubois County Making a Difference Awards held at Astra Theatre, which honored community-conscious student writers and filmmakers. Each year, Blue Ring supports the funding of globally significant ocean exploration and conservation projects positively shaping the future. For example, in 2019, Blue Ring donated $10,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Association in Costa Rica, which is dedicated to the protection of sea turtles.
The seven students representing Dubois County’s high schools, participating teacher reps, and Kimball Electronics mentors passionate about environmental matters worked together to reach a consensus on which causes to support.
Student members are Evie Sherer, Jordan Eckert (Southridge HS), Madison Mickler, Ben Schepers (Northeast Dubois HS), Gryffin Flowers, Lydia Erwin (Forest Park HS) and Abby Kidwell (Jasper HS).
When the student environmental council first met in January, they were challenged to share ideas on how all four schools could collectively celebrate Earth Day 2020 (April 22), create an action plan, and set the activity in motion.
The team came up with 20-some Earth Day ideas and narrowed the list to two: organize a planting ceremony at each school centered around a tree donated by the company; hold a “change wars” competition between the schools to raise money for an environmental cause.
The pandemic and resulting school closings thwarted those plans, but the team persevered and met online to determine a backup plan. It was determined that the easiest and safest thing to do was to simply resurrect and modify the initial idea related to donating money to an environmental charity.
Due to delays caused by the pandemic, the team decided to target World Environment Day (June 5) instead of Earth Day to implement the team’s idea.
The student environmental council idea was inspired last fall by Greta Thunberg, the teen environmental activist/sensation from Sweden.
Besides focusing on ideas to help the environment, Kimball Electronics also used the monthly student meetings as a way to expose them to experts outside of Dubois County.
Virtual meetings were set up with Blue Ring’s Alex Rose; Anna Sacks of New York City, who is focused on items discarded as waste by major retail companies which could instead by used to help people in need; and Dr. Vanessa Bezy, founder and president of the Wildlife Conservation Association, who is described by National Geographic as “The Jane Goodall of Sea Turtles.”
Teacher representatives are Susan Wagner of Southridge, Ellie Russell of Northeast Dubois, Joshua Dodd of Jasper, and Lavina Schwartz of Forest Park.
Kimball Electronics mentors and coaches are Scott Saalman, John Kahle, Chris Whann, Lynn Scheu, Jason King, Desiree Castillejos, Rylee Page and Cody Jones.
Involving students in environmental efforts is one of the latest ways the company’s locations throughout the world help make their communities be better places to live through the provision of time, talent, and treasure to support local, regional, and global community-support initiatives. To learn more about the company’s environmental successes and beliefs, visit the company’s online 2019 Environmental, Social & Governance report.
