Deforestation

ANTI-DEFORESTATION NATION

Student Names: Asad, Cynthia, Dima, Mehdi, Gureet, Lina, Sara, Sofia, Thomas

Project GOAL

Our goal was to inform the future generation of the harm deforestation brings, and its impacts on climate change. We wanted to make a difference, and tackle one of the many problems that deforestation brings: the decrease of carbon sinks.

With the decrease of carbon sinks, more carbon dioxide is entering our atmosphere, and trapping heat on Earth. This contributes to global warming, a large problem that has been going on for years now. Trees and plants are also a large source of oxygen, which is needed by most living beings to continue surviving. The loss of trees will also lead to loss of habitat, which then can lead to distrubtion of the food chain.

WHERE IT COULD GO NEXT...

ACTION

What action did you take?

We took action by informing younger generations about the impact and harms of deforestation, we reached out to schools and asked to present to them and do activities about deforestation, making kits and helping inform about deforestation and telling them how they can help.

We also made a website and created social media platforms to inform all age groups about this issue, we put all of our information and action on our website at https://sites.google.com/ocdsb.ca/deforestation-nation/home

<--- an unpacked mini kit, with the wooden stick, pollinator seeds and jiffy pod

We made mini kits with jiffy pods, pollinator seeds, and wooden sticks, and handed a kit to each student (as well as the teacher at the end). Then, we ran through the steps with them, showing them how to use the jiffy pods and plant the seeds. It was a section that took up most of the presentation, and it made the points much more effective and fun to participate in.

We educated our audience by talking about the impacts of deforestation and industrial agriculture and included all the rates and damages that happened because of deforestation, including all the facts and connecting deforestation back to climate change. We made a social media platform and informed our audience about the harms of deforestation and how they can help stop it, we also made a presentation and presented it to the younger students to help educate them. Our final statistics and the amount of people we reached out to and inspired were are below. In total, we reached out to 255 people through 3 social medias in a span of about 1 month, with thousand of interactions happening every single week. Check out our social media pages linked below.

Instagram

10 posts reached:

- - 68 followers
  - 108 likes
  - (10 posts)

TikTok

3 posts reached:

9 Followers
108 likes
2905 views

Facebook

3 posts reached:

178 friends

Reflection

We were able to send a class of students back home with pollinator seeds, which (hopefully) they will all plant in their gardens, or in more containers and pots. Pollinator plants/gardens would greatly help with the declining bee population, and the plants themselves are carbon sinks. We also gave a purpose to the plastic bottles, as planting containers, rather than the chance of them being thrown away or recycled (but going into the ocean).

Our youth action project went well. We went to the school, where we were able to present our project, and show kids how to plant the seeds. A few things didn't go quite as planned, however, due to not enough plastic bottles, or students jumping ahead. In the end, though, the youth action project was a success, and our goal of informing and spread seeds was met.

Coordination was key for our presentation to work, as well as being ready to step up and actively participate (such as making the rounds and helping students with planting). Communication was another thing, and throughout the presentation, when students jumped ahead and changes needed to be made to the script, the group made sure to inform each other of the necessary changes.

If we had a chance to go back and start again, we would spend less time debating and deciding what exactly we want to do as our project. And instead, we would work and think all together on how to make our project better and more interesting. That way, there would have been more time to present to more classes/schools, create a larger impact, and improve the delivery of the presentation.

Our project's next step would be to continue visiting intermediate and elementary schools, telling students about the dangers of deforestation and why they must take action to stop it, by fundraising and giving the money to anti-deforestation foundations, protesting against deforestation, spread information through flyers and posters, etc., and by planting carbon sinks.

Deforestation is a plague that will continue to spread as pollution rises, and if not halted or at least slowed, our unpredictable future may become more predictable, but not very pretty. It is up to our generation and the ones to follow to continue where the last left off, creating steady progress that will build up over time until the solution is found.

This is an important cause because Deforestation and the loss of trees and plants can cause climate change, desertification, soil erosion, flooding, raise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and many other problems for indigenous people. They should continue with it to inform and help people understand all these impacts of deforestation, and how they can be the generation that changes it all.

This is an issue that should be talked about more in our schools and science curriculums, we would like this to go to more and more schools and become a normalized issue to talk and inform about, we would also like that alot more planting and less cutting down of trees should happen, possibly creating a trend to stop the cutting of trees and have planting ceremonies, presentations to more and more schools just like the one we did and have a bigger of an impact then we had last time.

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS

Cynthia - Overall, it was definitely a project that was really different from the other ones I did this year. Although there were disagreements in the group in the beginning, we were able to work together and educate a grade eight class on the effects of deforestation. It was fun seeing people actually plant the kits that we worked on, and see the result of our efforts. It was a good way to sum up what I learned this year (especially about climate change) and put it into something visual. I had to use a mix of digital fluency and research skills.

Sofia - It was a unique experience that I won't forget. It was different that any other science projects that I ever did. I enjoyed doing this project so much. I am a little bit sad that this project came to an end, because I learned so many new skills that I couldn't have learned anywhere else. I learned about climate change, and how deforestation is impacting it. I also learned how we can prevent it, and stop climate change. This project taught and reminded me how to work in a group after two long years of Covid, when we were not allowed to do anything in groups because of the physical distasting. Our group had a few disagreement at first, but we managed to find a solution, so at the end we had a great results. We were able to go and present in person to a class where we talked about deforestation and it's impact to climate change. At the end we planted pollinator seeds, to help the bees, deforestation, and climate change. I hope in the future I'll have a chance to do something similar to this project to make another change towards climate change.

Sara - This project was definitely a unique and different experience in my opinion. I haven't done any other science project that involved real initiative and let us students take action against a problem that no one really talks about and normalize it, by speaking to the younger generation and telling them how they can be the change in the world, being our future doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, etc. they can be the people that completely change the future of the earth. I learned so much during this project, especially how to work in a big group of people, sure we had our ups and downs but we ended up with amazing results and had a big impact to a lot of people, reaching out to a big number of people using our social medias and website (https://sites.google.com/ocdsb.ca/deforestation-nation/hom) and other platforms, that gained a lot of attention from different age groups interested in the issue of deforestation and climate change and all their impacts. I thought going to a different school to present the issue and use our resources from LSF was a very fun and unique experience which I hope to experience again in my science classes in the future. I truly wish to have a bigger impact and do similar things in the future to help end climate issues and reduce everything that could worsen our earth and its issues.

Thomas - Throughout this project I had lots of fun, it was different compared to previous projects which I believed were all talk no show. This one required us to get hands on in the fight against climate change and that experience was very enjoyable especially with the group. Going to the grade 8 classroom and presenting was a great experience and the class was nice. Although the project started out with some group tension, we got over as a group and still found a way to complete the task with perfection. Even with the beginning challenges taking up time we pushed forward, creating the idea and starting to execute it. The presentation was created and the following script was made to fit it and writen in a way the grade 8 class was able to understand. We left that school with the class having learnt much about the effects of Deforestation, and them having a jiffy pod with a pollinator seed that will remind them of the presentation and what the plant can do for the environment.

Asad & Gureet - This was a very fun and interactive project that allowed the students to completely control their own project and ideas, which I've never seen before. Overall it was an enjoyable project because we could educate the younger generation about the negative impacts that deforestation is having on our planet. Instead of just giving a presentation, it was really an action project because we gave each student a small kit to make them aware about this topic, while also having fun. Asad and Gureet's collaboration with a mix of digital marketing skills allowed us to excel on the social media side. Our impact on this project about deforestation was spreading awareness through various platforms.

Dima-

Mehdi-

Lina-

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