For the third year in a row, Westover has placed in the top 20 schools worldwide that participate in the Project Green Challenge (PGC) — a 30-day international competition held each October that aims to “inform, inspire, and mobilize” high school, college, and graduate school students to take on environmentally-themed challenges.

This year, Westover finished in 16th place out of the 758 high schools and colleges that took part in the competition, according to Heather Nuzzo, a science teacher who is also the Director of Environmental Sustainability in the School’s Rasin Center for Global Justice. She has coordinated Westover’s PGC activities over the past three years.

Westover was also the top all-girls school in this year’s PGC, Heather noted.

A total of 20 Westover students — most of them drawn from Heather’s Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES) classes — took part in this year’s competition. A total of 4,572 students from all 50 states and from 85 countries participated in this year’s PGC.

“I made the Project Green Challenge a part of the AP Environmental Science curriculum,” Heather explained, “because it exposes my students to so many topics that deal with environmental issues and concerns. Each day’s set of challenges has a different theme; each day also has a different corporate or organizational sponsor.”

The sponsor of the day coordinates three levels of challenges – green, greener, and greenest — that are tied to that day’s theme, providing information to the student competitors through social media posts such as TED talks or informational videos. In response to the day’s challenge, the students gather information or take actions, then post their findings or responses on their own Instagram or Twitter accounts to earn points in the competition.

Because of ongoing pandemic conditions, Heather found “it was more of a challenge this year” to support her students while they were taking part in the Project Green Challenge. “Normally, I am seeing the students almost every day in class, so I can remind them ‘Don’t forget to do your Project Green Challenge assignments.’ It was also easier for students to ask questions if they were having problems uploading posts.” This year, with so many of her participating students working remotely from their homes around the world, they were working more on their own.

Making A Difference Through Small Changes

At least one of Heather’s AP Environmental Science students — junior Salma Talukdar — has found that taking part in the PGC competition has changed her day-to-day habits in small but telling ways.

Salma was inspired to take on an astonishing 41 challenges during the month-long program, placing among the top 10 students in the daily competition a number of times, and winning prizes from three of the competition’s sponsors, RW Garcia, Raaka, and Crow Canyon.

But for Salma, the competition gave her something even more profound: a new-found awareness of her own impact on the environment.

“At first,” Salma explained, “the challenge was just something that was required for the APES class. But after doing the first couple of challenges, I started realizing that the PGC is a great opportunity for me to learn more about the world we live in and the environmental issues going on. Before this, I knew almost nothing about our current environmental issues” beyond a few basic facts about them that she learned in science classes.

“The challenge allowed me to delve deeper and go into specifics on issues like climate change, redlining, and air pollution,” Salma said. “It allowed me to really grasp the concepts of what was causing these issues and how they may be fixed.”

Before long, Salma added, “I made it part of my daily routine to go on the PGC website, look at the daily challenges, and set aside at least an hour to research the current topic and not only educate myself but also educate others by posting a summary on my Instagram page that I had dedicated to the challenge.”  Posting on her Instagram page “motivated me to put a lot of effort into this challenge, because my followers weren’t just fellow PGC participants, they were also friends, acquaintances, and family that wanted to learn more.”

Salma said her favorite challenge — a plant-based one — came on Day 12. “Not only was it fun to create a meal plan for a plant-based day,” she explained, “but that experience showed me that plant-based options are endless. There were so many different recipes online that sounded delicious, so I picked a few with my family.” Not only did the experience introduce Salma to what has since become one of her favorite foods — sweet potato tacos — but “it also showed me that you can help the environment by just taking a small step.”

What Salma has found most satisfying from her experience in the competition was realizing that “I’ve changed a lot of my daily habits as a result of the PGC. There are little things — like composting, planning out your meal for the day so that there is no food waste, choosing a ‘conscious’ product over a conventional product whenever I go shopping, trying to live plastic-free, and more — that can make a difference.”

“People tend to think that they themselves aren’t going to be able to solve the problem,” Salma added, “but taking those steps will pile up and it will encourage others around you to do the same. So, in that way, you are already making a big difference.”

Through the Project Green Challenge, Salma said she learned about “so many things that I have never heard of before,” such as the harmful effects of “fast fashion” or how excessive water usage affects the environment. “With this knowledge,” she said, “I have been more conscious when I turn on the shower or when I go shopping.”

“In just one month,” Salma said, “I have become more committed to choosing environmentally-friendly options and to influencing the people around me to do the same.”

“It’s really influenced all of my decisions for the greater good.”