Congratulations to the Making Waves team from Carl Louis Stokes Academy Central Academy in Cleveland, OH for winning first place at the Youth For Justice Summit in Columbus Ohio! 

The Youth for Justice (YFJ) is a hands-on program designed to give students in grades 4-9 the opportunity to participate in service learning. Students lead efforts to prevent and eradicate problems and injustices in their schools, neighborhoods, and communities. The students pick an issue important to them, investigate and research the topic, propose solutions, and through an awareness group or policy, the students work to improve, eliminate the problem, or educate others about the problem.

The school has been partnering with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Drinklocal Drinktap, Blue Planet/Team Hope and their networks, to spread the news, “our need to conserve water”. On Earth Day water bottles they decorated with messages about pollution were on display at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The students presented their project at the YouthCaN Conference in New York City, April 6, 2011.  They will be presenting it at City Hall to the Board of Education.

The team’s partners and private donors from the Cleveland community have raised funds to make "Making Waves from Cleveland to Uganda" a reality by sending their teacher Teddy Mwonyonyi and 3 representative to St. Charles School in rural Uganda to film a documentary of the ground-breaking for water boreholes at the school. They will bring back the documentary for students and the community to see where/how their efforts travelled. Fund raising will continue through out the year and it is hoped that they will go back with one student for the grand opening in 2012.