SAVE - Rooted in the environment, branching into the community
About SAVESAVE, Students Against Violating the Earth, is an all volunteer group of about 200 high school students from Souderton Area High School. Each year members of this group provide nearly 2,000 hours of volunteer time in the community. The most popular events include the three community recycling days where over 30 tons of recyclables are collected; a summer camp program that provides over 100 kids with outdoor nature activities; and the many public programs and tours of the Student Environmental Education Campus.
With no model to follow or blueprint to use, students of SAVE, took the initiative to research, design, and create a campus which includes a functioning environmental demonstration home, a solar powered sustainable energy classroom building called CONNECTIONS, and a seven acre nature center on a wooded lot next to the district’s West Broad Street Elementary School. This Student Environmental Education Campus (SEEC) has become a model for student-lead environmental education programs across the nation. It has won numerous awards and was recognized as a winner of the EPA’s Presidential Environmental Youth Award presented by President Bush in the White House. The entire campus was built and paid for by the students and their community partners. It is run and maintained by SAVE members. The campus is open to the public and is the site of many of the group’s activities.
The organization has begun a campaign to provide assistance and inspiration to help other schools expand their environmental programs. SAVE members created the LEAP Program (Leadership in Environmental Action) which provides a forum for schools to network and work with each other. About a dozen different schools became involved in its first year and SAVE hopes to expand the program during the upcoming school year.
Recently, SAVE members have been challenged to design a way to cool small buildings without the use of electricity. After a year of design meetings with experts in the community, SAVE members created a new type of solar chimney which removes the warm air inside a building and replaces it with air cooled by underground pipes. Similar designs worked on by SAVE students are used in a local bank office and a church. A simpler, more applicable design is being approved for use on a new hospital project in Haiti with possible applications in both Central America and Africa. SAVE members hope this idea will become a new standard in third world construction.
SEEC: Student Environmental Education Campus
SAVE is a national award-winning environmental group made up of over 200 students from Souderton Area High School. The organization is entirely run and funded by students with the help of community partners.