Ladies of the Light

Renewable energy overview (see our bulletin insert, business letter, video, and newspapers articles for more specific details about the issue). Energy created from constant available resources like sun and wind Cuts down on C02 emissions made from non-renewable resources Replaces use of non-renewable resources like oil, natural gas, and coal

93% of energy in the USA comes from non-renewable resources Solar energy

Surprisingly, 6000 people in Wisconsin have jobs dealing solely with solar power! The fifth-largest amount in the country

Our State Capitol and other large businesses use solar energy Issue to address

Since schools use a lot of energy, we thought we would start there. In the first challenge we informed and challenged our school community to go green and raise funds to purchase solar panels for our school. By doing this we raised $3,500 towards our goal to raise $7,000 to purchase a solar panel.

We decided to continue what we started for the final challenge because we wanted to achieve our goal, there were a number of steps in our previous action

plan we wanted to see through, and we had some new exciting ideas to encourage others to look into renewable energy too!

While brainstorming for our Action Plan, we split our ideas into two categories:Our Challenge

Publicity for our solar panelFundraising for our solar panel

Challenging OthersEncouraging families, schools, and businesses to use renewable energy

The chart on the left is a visual representation of the scope of our action plan

The circles categorize our ideas based on a “sphere of influence” ranging from those closest to us to a global reach

Our Challenge Send out thank you notes/donation

receipts to our benefactors so far Create a segment in the parish

bulletin to inform parishioners and ask for support

Contact local newspapers (Wisconsin State Journal and Madison Catholic Herald) to publicize our story

Raise at least $3945.00 to add to our solar panel fund

Send information and ask for support through neighborhood listserve email

Send letter to local businesses asking for support

Look into grants, matching funds, and large donors

Challenge Others Create a classroom lesson plan to

help our school understand renewable energy

Challenge our 7th grade to take the baton in continuing this challenge for our school in the future

Look into partnerships with Madison Gas & Electric

Create a documentary video to show our story to people everywhere, especially teens in other schools, and encourage them to use renewable energy

Create a scholarship for another school to get started on a project dealing with preserving the environment like we did

We will be successful if… We cooperate well with our team members and those who help and support us We accomplish all goals set in our Action Plan

We will quantify our impact by… The amount of money raised towards our goal

Enough to purchase at least one solar panel for our school Future: Amount of energy used in our school and our carbon footprint is reduced

The number of people that came into contact with publications about us The number of people who will watch our documentary video on our school website, SchoolTube, YouTube, and those that receive a copy from us The number of schools that apply for the scholarship we set-up

Ariel Colin Created script for documentary, worked on PowerPoint

Maetraclare de Macedo Created script for documentary, worked on PowerPoint

Samantha Harrington Created script for documentary, worked on PowerPoint

Fiona Statz Created script for documentary, created PowerPoint storyboard, created letter to be sent to businesses, worked on PowerPoint

Lydia Swanson Created church bulletin insert, created PowerPoint storyboard

Savannah Wallace Helped with script for documentary, and created PowerPoint

Laura Whitt Created PowerPoint

Andrea Wright Created church bulletin insert, created letter to be sent to businesses, and created power point

EVERYONE Brainstorming, long-term planning, Catholic Herald and State Journal interview and pictures, documentary video preparation and taping, bulletin insert packing

A special thanks to… Ms. P. for meeting with Madison Gas & Electric on our behalf Bridget Statz for sending out thank-you’s and receipts Tim Tynan for shooting our documentary video and PowerPoint support Dawn Perkins for sending out the neighborhood listserve email Mrs. Shoemaker for helping us with our PowerPoint Presentation

Our Challenge Completed thank you notes/donation receipts to our benefactors for the

Air/Climate Challenge and the Final Challenge. This is an ongoing event as new donations flow in.

We created a bulletin segment in English and Spanish and distributed 600 copies to members of our Church parish.

Both the Wisconsin State Journal and the Madison Catholic Herald wrote newspaper articles and printed pictures about our project.

Through a listserve email to the school neighborhood, information was sent and support was requested.

We created and sent out a business letter to local area businesses to ask for support for the project.

We wrote and submitted a grant proposal to the Madison Gas and Electric Foundation for $14,000 (the price for two solar panels) plus $1,000 to set-up a scholarship in conjunction with our documentary video for another school to start a project like ours. We are still waiting to hear back from them.

Challenging Others We created a lesson plan for our school to inform the younger grades about

our project and encourage them to be mindful of their energy usage. MG&E is providing solar energy house kits and an “energy-ware” bike that powers different types of light bulbs. These tools will make our lesson more exciting and provide interactive experience for students.

We plan to challenge the 7th grade to continue raising funds for solar panels for our school next year when we’re gone. We will share our PowerPoint and all that we did with them and explain ideas of places to seek support that we did not get to this year.

We contacted Madison Gas and Electric and our teacher met with their Community Education Manager on our behalf to explore partnership opportunities with them. They are going to partner with us in 2 exciting ways (see the project gallery for more information.) :

offer a statewide teacher professional development course for staff at St. James and surrounding K-12 schools at our school in the Fall on the topic of renewable energy.

feature our group with a picture and story in their annual Earth Day Fun book, which gets sent to schools all over Wisconsin.

We contacted Tim Tynan, UW-Madison’s Life Sciences Department Technology Enhanced Learning Lead Consultant, who helped us create a documentary video to share our story. We plan to send this to other local schools, play it at the MG&E professional development course in the Fall, and post it to YouTube and SchoolTube with the hopes of inspiring other people to make an energy change like we did.

We don’t just want to encourage other schools, we also want to offer them help to get going on a project, so, with the first $1,000 we get after we raise $7,000 for our solar panel, we are going to create a scholarship for another school to get started 0 we on a project like ours. It will be publicized in conjunction with our video.

Tim Tynan of UW-Madison is producing our documentary

Through the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison Catholic Herald, Parish bulletin, and neighborhood listserve email, we got our story out to almost 190,000 people so far.

We are excited about the MG&E teacher professional development course that will be held here in the Fall and all the teachers, students, and schools that will attend and be impacted by the information shared.

When our documentary video is sent out and posted, even more people will hear about our story and be inspired to do something in their own community. The scholarship we plan to offer will be a great practical way for another

school to get started on making a difference as well.

Information about renewable energy

How to implement successful fundraising campaigns How to work with a group towards

a common goal Hard work and determination create

results Focus, cooperation, time management,

and asking for help are keys to success

New ways to format a PowerPoint Presentation

Team Scholarship $$ Upgrade personal technology

Teacher Science supplies for classroom New Science Textbooks

School Considering the following depending

on outcome of grant requests: Additional Solar Panel Mobile Computer Lab Scholarship $$ for another school

Ladies of the Light (promo video)Please click the link above to view the rough cut of our documentary video.

We are still working with our producer, Tim Tynan, to make a professional quality video to circulate in the near future. We wanted you to see what we have done

so far and we are excited about completing this product for our Action Plan!

Click thumbnails to view larger files

Click thumbnails to view larger files

We spent many hours after school and on weekends

working on our Action Plan for the Lexus Eco Challenge. We

estimate we put in over 50 hours as a team (many more

hours if we looked at individual efforts) on our Action Plan

since we were notified that we were finalists.