Spencer Elliot (pictured right) has been busy since he attended the Spring 2009 semester of The Island School. Spencer enrolled at Michigan State University and played football there through the end of his sophomore year. After sustaining an injury, he went abroad to Cape Town during the fall of his junior year and interned with a non-profit organization called Sporting Chance. The goal of Sporting Chance was to “provide an opportunity for impoverished youth to have an option to play sports. They also hosted coaching clinics in more affluent areas, but their work in the Townships (or “shanty towns” as my high school text book referred to them) was the cornerstone of their mission”. Spencer is an advertising major so, he spent his time with Sporting Chance crisscrossing all over Cape Town documenting “everything I saw. I went to everything from coaching clinics, to charity events, to school gym classes. I would then turn my footage into promotional videos that Sporting Chance could use to show their sponsors what they were doing. My internship experience allowed me to see Cape Town in its entirety. I saw the beautiful, white beaches with pent house apartments, I saw the tin shacks families live in with no running water and everything in between”. As time passed Spencer realized that there was a true homelessness epidemic in Cape Town, particularly among the youth. After just one month on the job in Cape Town, “I sent a Facebook message to my mom telling her that I couldn’t come home for my spring semester, I had fallen in love with Cape Town and felt like there was more I was supposed to do while I was there. She told me that she supported my decision, but it was up to me to find a way to put a roof over my head and work. I started researching non-profits in the Cape Town area, but it didn’t take me long to decide I wanted to do to something with street children. I found The Homestead, contacted Paul and the rest is history. Bwatts and I stayed in a 1 bedroom studio apartment smaller than a dorm room and payed $200 dollars per month”.

Bwatts (pictured left above) and Spencer first met in the 8^th grade as they played on the same football team together. Their relationship was cordial but certainly never a formal friendship until their senior year in high school. Spencer says he will never forget the moment their friendship began, he was “walking outside of our school and I heard someone digging around in a dumpster. All of a sudden Bwatts stuck his head up and I was shocked. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was searching for bottle caps for coke rewards. Gosh…I’ll never forget it. A couple weeks later, we had the first day of our Media Broadcasting class. The class which aired the school news every day. Our teacher Mrs. Hamersma told us we had to pick a partner to work with throughout the class. I didn’t really know why, but as soon as she said that I knew I wanted this kid who was searching for coke rewards in a dumpster to be my partner. I asked him and he was kinda caught off guard. I was too I guess. The whole thing came from left field really. But luckily he said yes and the rest is history. We’ve been working together ever since” but working for The Homestead is by far the largest project they have ever done together as a team. For a behind the scenes clip covering this moment, look here

In Spencer’s eyes, what makes Cape Town’s current situation so alarming is the number of homeless children on the streets. The Homestead is a non-profit organization based within the greater Cape Town area that provides a chance for homeless kids to receive an education, a team of supportive adults and most importantly a home to boys that would otherwise be homeless. Spencer and his friend Bwatts are currently attempting to raise $50,000 for the benefit of The Homestead. They arrived at that goal after “talking with Paul Hooper, the director of the Homestead. He told us that it cost them on average $1,000 dollars to support one kid for one year. That’s including their tuition fees, housing, food, everything”. They arrived at that number because it would provide total at The Homestead for 50 kids that were previously on the street. To raise this money, Spence and Bwatts have created a feature length documentary which launched yesterday here.  The documentary they have created “dives into the world of what life at the homestead is like, the work they are doing, the boys stories, the staff members and we tried to integrate some things that will allow people to get a feel for what it was like for two 20 year old best friends to be in Cape Town chasing a dream. We put a priority on trying to make the Documentary as upbeat and interactive as possible. We want the viewer to feel like they are standing there next to us experiencing The Homestead for themselves”.

Spencer’s decision to work in Cape Town was influenced by his time at The Island School back in 2009. It was his first time away from home for an extended period, and his first time experiencing the wonders of a completely different world. Immersing himself “in a new community where I didn’t know a soul at such a young age has helped form me into the man I am today”. As a future advertising major, Spencer loved “interviewing locals and hearing their perspectives. Island School remains a turning point in my life where I made a decision about the person I wanted to consciously try to be”.

To conclude, Spencer has a couple shout outs that he would like to make sure are heard. The first goes out to “my entire semester first off. I think about Spring ’09 and the legendary faculty we had regularly. I have the glass window tattooed on my left arm for a reason. Because Island School Spring 09 changed my life and I’m forever grateful”. More specifically, he would like to thank former faculty member Andrew “Fieldy” Fields and fellow student Latario “Tario” Moxey. Fieldy was inspirational to Spencer, he describes there as simply being “a goodness about him that was infectious. I trusted him and that was a big deal for me”. Then, Spencer refers to Tario as “one of the most important people I’ve met in my entire life. We had more important talks than I’ve probably had with anyone and I will always be thankful that we were able to meet”.

All of us at The Island School wish Spencer nothing but the best in his efforts to raise money for The Homestead. For additional information on what Spencer and Bwatts are up to, check out their Crowdrise campaign page here.

A first for the Alumni Spotlight column, Phoebe Colvin-Oehmig recently returned home after attending the Fall 2015 Gap Year program at The Island School. She graduated from Waynflete in Portland, Maine and had been inspired to study plastics since she first read an inscribed copy of Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion by Loree Griffin Burns at the age of 13. Her interests were only furthered during her studies at Waynflete and so when given the chance to study plastics during her nine weeks at The Island School, Phoebe jumped at the opportunity. Inspired by what she experienced and learned during her time on campus at The Island School, Phoebe returned home and wrote the following about what she has accomplished at home and what she will be up to in the near future:

With my new knowledge, I knew I needed to do something. I returned home to Maine with a mission to eliminate Styrofoam and plastic bags in Brunswick. I joined “Bring Your Own Bag Midcoast,” a local grassroots environmental advocacy group whose mission is to promote reusable bags and containers in Midcoast Maine. In an effort to raise awareness and to educate the public, I began writing letters to newspaper editors in which I highlighted the equally hazardous environmental effects of both paper and plastic bags, as well as the health risks involved with plastic. Not only are plastics harmful to Maine’s seafood industry by causing premature deaths of marine animals by clogging their digestive systems, they also poison our seafood. Plastics act like sponges, soaking up toxins in the ocean. These, toxins, called Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), enter marine animals when they ingest micro plastics. These toxins, including DDT, dioxins and other pesticides, reside in their tissues. When a fish swallows plastics, and a lobster eats that fish, and a lobster-man catches the lobster, and we consume the lobster, we eat not just the meat of the lobster, but all the toxins residing in the lobster’s tissue from the plastic the fish ate.

Plastics picked up after a trawl

While people seem to better understand the hazards of plastic bags, paper bags seem environmentally benign. However, the reality is paper bags are just as environmentally damaging. Over its lifetime, one paper bag produces 70% more greenhouse gas emissions and 50 times more water pollutants than a plastic bag, increasing atmospheric acidification and ozone depletion. Paper bags also leave a greater carbon footprint than plastic; it takes the same amount of fuel to ship eight plastic bags as one paper bag. As a local grocery chain stated, “It takes us six deliveries of paper to bring the same number of bags to stores as when we use plastic, with all the fuel use and emissions that go along with that. The production of paper had 4 times the energy and global warming implications of plastic.”Microplastics in a sieve

At a December Brunswick Town Council meeting, our group, Bring Your Own Bag Midcoast, proposed an ordinance to ban Styrofoam. The council room was overflowing with supporters for a Styrofoam ban as we presented the environmental and health issues caused by Styrofoam and showed the minimal cost difference between Styrofoam products and other alternatives. After several testimonies, the members of the Town Council unanimously voted to begin the process of banning Styrofoam. Next on our agenda is to implement a five-cent fee on paper and plastic bags in stores with greater than two percent food sales in order to encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags. This plan would copy other bag ordinances, which have been deemed successful. However, with publicity come detractors. I have had to rebut press written in opposition to my efforts. But I was also contacted by the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), which offered to fund our mission—further evidence that ripples spread. In addition to writing newspaper articles and blog pieces for my high school and NRCM, I have filmed a public service announcement promoting reusable bags, which will soon air on a local television channel. I plan to major in environmental studies and continue advocacy as I continue my education.

Phoebe speaking at her local town council meeting

I will be returning this spring to the Cape Eleuthera Institute as an intern for the Flats Conservation and Ecology team to continue researching marine plastics. I stepped away from comfort this year, from my familiar lifestyle and the expected path from high school into college. I learned to consider outside myself, to live sustainably for the future, to look globally but also to know that action at the local level can bring about real change.

Island School Alumna Krissy Truesdale (pictured right) from the F’13 Island School semester has been working tirelessly to bring solar power to the East Coast since before her time on campus. She is the founder and CEO of a novel charity called Solar for Our Superheroes or S4OS for short. The mission of S4OS, as can be found on their Facebook page, reads as follows: “Solar for Our Superheroes is a nonprofit organization  thanking local leaders such as veterans, teachers, firefighters, and police officers with solar energy for their homes. In doing so, we are able to thank our heroes, bring together communities, and educate about renewable energy options in our MA neighborhoods”. Krissy’s inspiration for her project goes back to her childhood. She has always “been passionate about wildlife and nature. My childhood consisted of me running around in the New England forests with my best friends, making up adventures with magic and dragons, adventures in which I would always be the hero coming in to save the day”. Krissy was hooked on the concept of heroes but also of the environment. She joined her high school’s Environmental Action Committee which encouraged her to believe that she could make a positive difference. At one of the meetings with her school’s program, Krissy met a girl from Arizona who was “chatting up about solar energy in her state. I made a comment about it was too bad that solar didn’t work in New England and she was taken aback; we have sunlight, why wouldn’t it work? We did some research and turns out it would work, and very well, but since no one had seen it around to prove that it worked here, most people assumed otherwise. It was a cycle of inaction.” Krissy set out to break that “cycle of inaction” and struck upon inspiration for her charity in her grandfather who was a firefighter, plumber, electrician and firehouse cook all at the same time simply to pay the bills. Other members of her family have served in the Navy, ROTC or as teachers in schools so Krissy always had a profound appreciation for her family and how they had found ways of dedicating themselves to service on behalf of the community.  To Krissy, “giving solar panels to these people seemed to be a perfect solution to thank them and save them money, while also creating the good examples of renewable energy that we need.”

Krissy credits The Island School for teaching her how to manage a team, how to take criticism and most importantly how to move on from a failure. She learned not to give up when an idea or a presentation turned out poorly and instead how to adapt. For Krissy, attending The Island School “solidified my passion and direction for a life of activism”. She still keeps her letters from her kayak group taped to her mirror in her college dorm and uses them to motivate herself. She also has the guiding hand of our own Christian Henry on the Board of Directors for S4OS where he provides feedback and support.

Recently, S4OS achieved official 501c3 status meaning it is a recognized charity. This, along with the fact that Krissy has found the first hero she will be giving solar panels to, a partnership with The Boston Solar Company and the hiring of her first five interns means that she is well on her way to success. Krissy is now looking to provide solar panels to as many heroes as she can find with the eventual goal of spreading the transition to renewable energy throughout all of New England. Best of luck to you Krissy! All of us here at The Island School are rooting for you!

Island School alum Drew Ginsberg (pictured left) of the recently graduated Summer 2015 semester has been working to make a difference in extraordinary ways in his community. Through his family’s involvement with a rehabilitation hospital, he found out that there were specialty tricycles being custom built for children who couldn’t otherwise ride bikes or trykes on their own. For these kids, normally restricted to motorized equipment to be mobile, having their own way of getting around is an important symbol of freedom and independence. One catch: each tryke was unusually expensive, and there was a waiting list of over 2 dozen young people in need. Drew stepped in, undeterred by the challenge, and got his friends, family, and community organized around this effort. Drew first formalized his efforts to help young people when he was 13 and decided to use his Bar Mitzvah project as his platform to raise the money for the first tryke he ever donated.

Island School founder Chris Maxey recently attended the presentation of the very last tryke that Drew’s fundraising efforts were able to secure for the final family on his waiting list.  The ceremony took place in Salem New Hampshire at the Northeast Rehabilitation Hospital. Drew is now reaching out to other families in need – and The Island School is proud to celebrate his dedication to making a real difference for his community. More information about Drew’s project can be found here including a list of his awards and recognitions relating to the project. Most recently on that list is a letter from the US House of Representatives recognizing his efforts! Congratulations Drew! We at The Island School look forward to seeing the progress you make in the future.

Margaux Burnham, an alumna from the Fall 2010 semester is currently a junior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has recently completed a semester abroad with the SEA Semester program. Margaux’s program included five weeks spent on the Woods Hole campus in Cape Cod. She then spent the rest of her term sailing from Barcelona to Majorca, the Straits of Gibraltar, Madeira the Canary Islands and Cadiz, Spain. Participants in her program included herself and 13 other college students. Every student on the program takes three core classes plus two electives. One of Margaux’s classes was focused on the concept of sense of place, very similar to some of the learning conducted at The Island School.

The actual sailing aspect of SEA Semester turned out to be very similar to The Island School’s new sailing program. Margaux and the other students were expected to take turns manning watches at night as well as various duties during the day doing everything up to and including navigating and steering. The program constantly pushed Margaux outside of her mental and physical comfort zones, especially while at sea and battling the effects of seasickness while still needing to be a productive and effective member of the team. Margaux wants to give a shoutout to her Fall 2010 semester and encourages anyone in college who is interested in a non-traditional semester abroad program to consider taking a look at SEA semester