Youth Venture

A recycling committee created in Mission High School, San Francisco to implement a recycling system into the school.

The story of this committee dates back to the experience of Terence, one of the co-founders of the Mission Recycling Committee. During the summer of 2006, Terence was selected out of 150 high school juniors to be one out of 18 participants of the Coro Exploring Leadership. Exploring leadership is a summer experiential leadership internship program that strives to train the leaders of tomorrow. Throughout the summer, he received training in public speaking, phone and communication skills, and organizational techniques.
The 8 week crash course empowered Terence and he felt that he needed to make a difference in school. Thus, he created an action plan and applied to Youth Venture with his dream. Terence's dream was to create a recycling committee. The reason being that the school trash cans attracted his attention. As he strolled down hallways, he grew very disturbed of the insects that spawned out of the bins. When he peered into them, he saw that there were lots of paper and recyclables in the trash can and Terence knew that those things would end up taking up landfill space. The environment had captured Terence's attention and he wanted to get the school to recycle and teach others the importance of recycling.
With a seed funding of $590, Terence rallied around his high school in October and got ten other passionate members onto his team. With a committee, the Mission Recycling Committee applied for a local grant for youth project. After a 16-page application project and a phone interview, Youth Funding Youth Ideas (YFYI) granted MRC close to $10,000.
The team's initial goals in November were to place one recycling bin in each classroom, have at least 15 hallways recycling bins, and to collect the collected recyclables as service for the school. By March 2007, MRC collaborated with SF Environment to secure one recycling bin in every classroom and to give two school wide assemblies to raise awareness. Also, the team used 10% of the grant money to purchase 15 recycling receptacles. In just three months, the committee collected over 1000 bottles and cans.