Hi all

I just joined the Design Team for Mesa's playground renovation. It
was a great meeting on Friday. I had an idea that I floated and was
very pleased at the positive response.

My idea is based on an article I read in World Ark many months ago
(World Ark is the magazine Heifer International sends out). I read
about a company in the U.S. that is installing play equipment in
rural villages in Africa, energy generating equipment. A merry-go-
round gets pushed by the children and in the course of their playing,
energy is generated by the movement.

In the quest to turn Mesa into a Sustainability-focused school, I
thought that energy should be right up there at the top. We have a
great start with the solar panels. Solar panels are passive though,
and I wanted to harness the unbridled energy of youth!

As I said before, the idea was received positively. What I am going
to need now is a committee to help me research this, write grants,
and figure out what exactly this looks like. We have some people who
expressed interest at the outset of G2T; I now know that I need some
people working on the Sustainability Committee.

This is ONE aspect of what Sustainability is; there will be other
projects in the near future. This one is exciting because it's not
every year that we get to have a say in a new playground equipment or
a redesign of the building. This is the time to get those ideas out
there and see if they're really as "pie in the sky" as they sounded
when we dreamed them up.

Lara