Day 0 - About our Project

"CAS Cleanup" is our volunteer-based CAS project over the summer which will involve weekly cleanups at various parks around the town of Aurora. This project also aims to promote environmentalism as we will be creating a website which will display our cleanup progress, as well as include a blog which will inform the public about our cleanups and environmental facts. By undertaking this project, we hope to give back to our community by keeping our town's parks clean, get some exercise through physical cleanup, and demonstrate creativity by communicating our project in the unique medium of the Internet.

Ultimately, we do not have a set goal for this project, but we aim to have a final product of a map that would display the areas of all the parks we visited, as well as a visual representation of the amount of trash we picked up at each location (will be determined by weighing the trash we picked up at each park). This would allow us to see the concrete statistical impact our project has in benefitting the community and keeping our local parks clean.

Learning Outcomes (as outlined by IB): - Initiative & Planning: Each of our cleanups are planned out, and the necessary tools and materials are obtained, before being initiated. I have also reached out to the Town of Aurora and communicated our plans with one of their employees, who has volunteered to be our supervisor. - Commitment & Perseverance: despite the few people on our team, we believe our actions will have a significant impact and are committed to carrying out cleanups weekly, throughout the summer. - Collaborative Skills: Cleanups are coordinated between our project's members, and the website is maintained by all our members. This requires strong communication and leadership skills. - Global Engagement: Our work in environmental stewardship mirrors the situation in many nations, particularly developing ones that are struggling with issues such as pollution. By taking a firsthand approach to tackling the issue of pollution in our local communities, we can better reflect on the importance of this issue on a global scale. - Ethics of Choices & Actions: Littering is an immoral and unethical action whose significance, if unchecked, could snowball into a massive problem for many communities. Our project allows us to reflect on the moral significance of combatting such environmental issues, as those issues affect everyone, not just the perpetrators.

#CASCleanup2021