Moore Team Wins State Project Citizen Award
A team of seventh grade girls at Moore Middle School in Portland won the Exemplary Portfolio award at the recent Project Citizen State Showcase in Augusta for a project about environmental problems caused by Styrofoam. Students will present their project to the Portland School Committee on June 4 at 7 p.m. at the committee’s business meeting in Room 250 of Casco Bay High School.
Project Citizen charges students to study a community issue in depth, come up with the solution that they believe holds the most merit and prepare an action plan to implement their solution. The Moore team’s project, “Fight the White Pollution: The Dangers of Styrofoam,” is the only one from Maine to advance to the National Project Citizen Showcase in New Orleans in July.
The Moore students drew on the expertise of Bridget Stevens. As a middle school student in Freeport in 1991, she led the effort to pass one of the country’s first municipal bans on Styrofoam. Stevens met with the Moore students to help them prepare their project, and she joined them at the State Showcase.
The Moore Project Citizen team plans to continue their work by seeking a Styrofoam ban in Portland. Students will present their recommendations to the Sustainability Committee of the Portland City Council on May 29 at 5 p.m. in the State of Maine room at City Hall.
The members of the winning team are: Alyssa Donovan, Asisa Isack, Savannah Welch, Hido Abdulleh, Sarah McGeough, Sarah McMann and Carly Ladd. David Hilton is their social studies teacher at Moore.
