A team of students from Newberry High School is one of a handful of high school teams in the nation to win top honors in a national environmental competition sponsored by the Lexus and Scholastic corporations.
The Newberry P.R.I.D.E. (Panthers Researching and Improving Different Environments) group was recently notified that its entry to the Final Lexus Eco-Challenge has been selected as a first-place award winner. Only six other high school teams in the U.S. earned that distinction.
Team members Naomi Daniels, Linda Davis, Allison Doolittle, Gabby Eagle, Kaitie Bullard and Ja’Layne Kronz, their teacher Cynthia Holland and the school will share $30,000 in prize money for their accomplishment. The team has already won $10,000 for earlier entries into the water and air-climate phases of the Challenge. The Final Eco-Challenge is the culmination of three phases of competition conducted throughout the school year.
The Newberry team won first place in the Final Challenge with a series of activities that included the clean-up of local sites, the production of public service announcements, the creation of educational materials and the development of websites and MySpace pages.
“This challenge has empowered the students by allowing them to learn about an important environmental issue and then act on their knowledge to improve the local community,” said Holland. “They’ve learned their actions can make a difference.”