Kiwanis Club helps kids get down and dirty on water conservation

Sierra Vista, Arizona, Herald
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2008/10/26/news/doc49042de043ade799497388.txt

SIERRA VISTA — The children at William Carmichael Elementary School are getting a firsthand look at water conservation thanks to the San Pedro Kiwanis Club.

As part of Make a Difference Day, an annual event started by USA Weekend magazine, the San Pedro Kiwanis Club and its student organizations helped fund and install a water-harvesting unit for the school’s student-run garden.

The Kiwanis Club helps out every year at the school, said Stephen Kurtz, a San Pedro Kiwanis member. “We wanted to do something different,” he said. “The majority of years we’ve painted playground equipment.”

With that in mind, Kurtz set out to do something for the school’s garden club. The water-harvesting unit will collect rain water and store it in two large, 550-gallon barrels. “We’re putting up gutters, just like you would at your house, and then down spouts that bring the water down from the gutters,” he said.

After collecting in the barrels, students will be able to use spigots to fill up their watering pots and water the garden without wasting as much as they would with a garden hose, said Yvonne Vick.

Vick, who teaches kindergarten at Carmichael, is also the faculty sponsor for the garden club. “We’ve had (the garden) almost 10 years,” Vick said.

The garden began as a project of preschool teachers who wanted a garden for their students, but now the entire school, preschool through fifth grade, enjoys the small plot of land between two halls of the school building.

“We have kids in the garden club that started in preschool that are in second grade now,” she said. “They keep coming back. They want to learn.”

A large portion of the garden is sponsored by donations from the public that qualify as a tax credit. “So people can donate to the garden clubs at schools, and the money comes right back to them when they file their return,” Vick said.

While the adult Kiwanis members and their high school organization, the Key Club from Buena High School assembled the water harvester, and children of the garden club and the Carmichael K Kids Club, also a Kiwanis organization, got their hands dirty pulling weeds and helping Vick dig up a section of garden so they could add compost.

“They’re so willing to get into the soil and get dirty,” she said. “They don’t mind to get their hands into it.”

Getting students outside and working in the garden is a great way to spark an interest in natural science, Vick said.

“This gives them a connection to nature. They start by planting that little seed and watching it grow and caring for it,” she said. “They take it from day one up until being able to eat what they’re grown.”

Two weeks ago, students were harvesting carrots and tomatoes that will later be made into a pizza sauce, she said. Though Vick said students enjoy their garden’s vegetables over anything from the grocery store, they aren’t exactly vegetarians.

“Anything that we grow, the kids would rather feed to the turtles than eat themselves,” she said, “so we’re trying to teach them about a variety of foods.”

In addition to the water harvesting set up, which Kurtz estimated costing up to $1,400, the San Pedro Kiwanis donated $1,000 to the Carmichael K Kids Club, which was used to buy food, half of which was donated to the Salvation Army Food Bank, with the other half going to the Carmichael Resource Center.

“This is our fifth year of doing something for Make a Difference Day,” Kurtz said.

Students who use the garden have the chance to observe firsthand how they can make a difference in the world around them, Vick said.

“Kids have to have something that they’re motivated by,” she said. “Some are motivated by sports, some are motivated by just reading, and some children are naturalists. They need to get their hands in the dirt. They need to learn how things happen and why they happen and how they have an impact, how they can change what happens.”