We want to make our community more aware of the problem with marine debris! We have a big fishing industry here in Hawaii, and we have a fishing pier here in Kaneohe. On our field trips, we found a lot of junk at the pier and at some of the other beaches. Yuck! We want people to learn that they should stop throwing their trash in the water and on the beaches.

Educating other people is an important part of helping the marine debris problem, so we decided to do a community awareness project.

There are three main parts to our project:

  • a poster contest at our school
  • a community poster display
  • a penny drive for donations to coastal cleanup projects.

1. School Poster Contest We had a marine debris poster contest at our elementary school. We told the classrooms about our project, and asked them to make posters. We picked one poster from each classroom that was the best. Those students won a certificate for a fancy juice!

2. Community Poster Display We took the posters from the poster contest and displayed them in the Library at our schoool. We wanted people in our community to learn about marine debris and to know that students care about it.

3. School Penny Drive - We took some of the posters and put them in our library. We had a penny drive to collect money to help stop marine debris. We made almost $50.00! We donated the money to The Ocean Conservancy International Coastal Cleanup so that we could sponsor a coastal cleanup team. See their web site at http://www.oceanconservancy.org for more information.
To see Our Poster Art Gallery,