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By Lisa Moore
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
The concept of being green encompasses a wide range of ways in which people reduce waste, reuse things, and recycle materials. On Thursday, October 20, in the Linden Square, two groups of Wellesley Students were honored for their work to help make Wellesley a greener town.
The first group to be recognized was comprised of three middle school students: Lydia Barker, Neev Gamble, and Sophie Maggioni. The three young ladies are all 8th grade students and members of local Girl Scout Troop 73505 who spent a year completing a “Little Library Project” in pursuit of the Girl Scout Silver Award. A part of being a Girl Scout includes earning badges and awards as a Scout tries new things and attempts new accomplishments. For a middle school Girl Scout, the highest award achievable is the Girl Scout Silver Award.
To receive the award, the girls had to complete a “Cadette Journey” in which they went into their neighborhood to identify an area they felt needed change. They picked an action project that could effect change in their community, developed the project, made a plan and put it in motion, reflected on their project, shared it with the community and celebrated their finished project. Lydia, Neev and Sophie, identified the need to promote literacy in the community and came up with the idea of having a “Little Free Library” installed in Linden Square. Once their project idea was approved by the board of Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, the three young ladies got to work, spending over 50 hours each to bring the project from start to finish.
“We all really like Girl Scouts and reading, it was fun to do this project together,” said Sophie.
“It gave us time to be together, especially since I attend a different school,” said Lydia.
“This is unique to get to this level of award. The entire project was girl led and girl run,” said Neev.
The Little Free Library is a growing trend taking shape in many towns across the country. The concept is simple: create a space where people can share books with the community. The small library box, located in front of Linden Square, is a place where people can leave books for others to enjoy and take books to read for themselves. The Little Library was designed to be mostly self-sustaining. Lydia, Neev, and Sophie said they and other members of Troop 73505 will maintain the library, restocking it with donated books when needed.
Funded by donations and assisted by their parents the three spent their Sundays together for the better part of a year working on design, logistics, and construction. Holly Bitz, marketing manager for Linden Square property, helped the girls get approval for putting the Little Free Library at the Linden Square location. “We thought it was a great idea to promote literacy and recycling,” she said. When asked about their favorite part of the project, the three young ladies agreed it was seeing the finished product and seeing how far they came from concept to completed project.
A second group of WHS students from the Evolutions program were celebrated for their interest in a greener community. The Evolutions program is a program of study at WHS for juniors and seniors. After the Natural Resources Commission passed the town wide bylaw banning stores from using plastic bags, they reached out to Roche Brothers and the students in the Evolutions program to design a recyclable bag as one of their class projects. With the help and guidance of Evolutions teacher Thom Henes, the students created small teams that had to work together to design a recyclable bag.
The students went into the community to survey customers on what they wanted in a recyclable bag. Several designs were submitted, with the top three chosen by a panel of judges. The three designs were then posted in Roche Brothers for a week, during which time customers voted on the winning design. Students Caroline Green and Allison MacDougall created the winning design. The bags will be available for purchase from Roche Brothers in early December with the full plastic bag ban taking effect in January.
In addition to the student led green projects, Ashley Stanley, founder and Executive Director of Lovin’ Spoonfuls, a food rescue organization, was on hand to talk about a new partnership created with Roche Brothers stores. Ashley created Lovin’ Spoonfuls as a way to rescue usable food from large retail shelves, upcycling it directly to soup kitchens and community meal programs. Since the partnership began in April of this year, eight stores have joined the partnership and over ¼ million pounds of food has been rescued and delivered to people in need.
At nearly 2000 lbs. a week, we waste nearly 40% of food produced. The Wellesley Roche Brothers store alone rescued 28,000 lbs. of food since April. Lovin’ Spoonfuls “Creates a bridge between abundance and needs.” said Ashley. For more information about Lovin’ Spoonfuls, visit www.lovinspoonfulsinc.org.
