Project Launch:

Just as the community of San José de Upala in Costa Rica was about to finish its first regional recycling center a Kids Connect grant arrived and helped to transform the students in the area’s 20 schools into envirowarriors. To start things off each school installed collection bases to receive the community’s recyclables. But they didn’t fill themselves.  New habits needed to be cultivated. Generations of trash burners and litterers needed to understand how and why recycling and reusing was worth the effort. Where to start? With the kids, of course. Kids like 10-year-old Louis Diego Prado Campos who “loved building a recycling bin out of plastic bottles.” And who reports that when his teachers taught him to distinguish different types of waste, “they were right.” Thanks, Louis Diego, you’re a pretty good teacher yourself.