Greenworks: Student Engineering Projects Fund

Greetings all,

I hope the new year finds you well.  We were recently awarded a grant for our astrotourism projects from the International Astronomical Union's Office of Astronomy for Development.  This will allow us to finish up our astrotourism and museum work in the upcoming months, which will be implemented in the longterm through our partners at the Etelman Observatory in St. Thomas.

Discussions with our colleagues at the Etelman Observatory indicated that they want to continue developing additional programs hosted at the observatory, but ones that are focused more on the local population's educational needs.  We decided that this would be a good fit for our Greenworks program.  Greenworks is an environmental stewardship global classroom program that works with students in Ukraine, Indonesia, and Brazil.  The goal of the program is to help students who want to address an environmental issue (such as climate change or plastic pollution) acquire the necessary skills and tools to design and implement a successful approach.  So far, we have helped students in Indonesia develop upcycled trash cans for better trash management and composting businesses.  New projects in Indonesia are focusing on corals and traditional ecologic knowledge, and our inaugural program in Ukraine has students working on a monitoring program for a local hydroelectric dam.

These environmental stewardship projects need technical support and tools, and developing these tools would provide a great engineering opportunity for teens and young adults in the US Virgin Islands.  As a result, we're going to start building a fund to help support these engineering projects, with expansion possible to partnering clubs and classrooms in California, South Korea, and Ukraine later this year.  In the long term, we are aiming to build the Greenworks Global Classroom where we'll be able to connect youths all over the world in an exchange of knowledge, tools, and culture as they work together to address critical environmental issues.

We hope you'll join us in helping launch this fund with a 200% matching opportunity.  Between March 6-19, all donations to our new Greenworks Engineering Fund will be matched at 200% and support kids in the USVI who will help engineer solutions for the new friends they'll be making around the world.

With gratitude,

Lev

Greetings all,

Our astrotourism projects have been progressing well.  Our student intern, Nikita, presented her exhibit concept at an annual research symposium at the University of the Virgin Islands and received positive feedback.  We're in the process of constructing the exhibit for display and use at the Virgin Island's Children's Museum, with most of the equipment acquired (which can be challenging to do in the USVI!) and construction to begin soon.  Additionally, we have started designing astronomy tours to integrate with a local scuba company and farmer's market in the upcoming months.  We're working with our partners to determine what kinds of astronomy content will work best with them and hope to have some demos in place very soon!

With gratitude,

Lev

Greetings all,

Our astrotourism work is in progress.  Currently, our summer research student, Nikita is designing an exhibit for the Virgin Islands Children's Museum that will teach kids about the positioning of the Sun, Moon, and Earth in explaining phenomena in the night sky, like the changing of the constellations over the course of the year and eclipses.  This hands-on activity will allow kids to position the three bodies in various ways, observe how they would look from space and then, via a small camera positioned on Earth, help them learn how to perspective-shift to understand why things look different from the surface of Earth looking up than they would look if you were floating in space.  We're excited about this exhibit and Nikita has designed it in a way that allows smaller travel versions to be created for mobile public outreach events around the island.  Later in the year, we'll be working to build additional travel astronomy outreach events through support from the Office of Astronomy for Development.

With gratitude,

Lev

Greetings all,

Thank you for your contributions to our new Caribbean astrotourism project during our winter fundraising drive.  We have also been awarded a small grant from the Office of Astronomy for Development, which we have been able to pool together with your donations to increase our impact even more!

Currently, we are in the process of getting the project up and running.  Over the next few months, we'll be developing a curriculum for prospective astrotourism students to help them learn about the basics of establishing and running a business in the US Virgin Islands, astronomy, and establishing and evaluating learning outcomes in public outreach events.  We're planning on offering this workshop later this year.

Additionally, we are beginning to develop astrotourism kits and activities that students will be able to use when interning with a local business or starting their own business.  In the next few weeks, our student intern, Nikita, will be working with a University of the Virgin Islands professor to offer a tour of the night sky at a wedding party, which we'll use to trial the materials and activities for doing private astrotourism activities like this.  She is also working on developing an exhibit at the Virgin Islands Children's Museum that will teach spatial reasoning when thinking about how planets move through the night sky, which we'll later adapt for astrotourism activities elsewhere on the islands.

Thanks again for your support, and please help spread the word about this exciting project.  We're expecting great things this year!

With gratitude,

Lev