The Environmental Club is seeing a revival after years of shrinking participation, with multiple new leaders and events lined up for the fall.
Pre-Covid, the Environmental Club was at its peak, one of the largest clubs with 75 active members with multiple sub committees.
“There was really active involvement in the local community, and definitely in the school,” said club advisor Laura Greeley.
Things took a turn during 2021; the obstacle of not being able to see each other in person was what caused the downfall of the club. Greeley, along with the club leaders at the time, tried to keep participation through things like cooking classes through Zoom.
Greeley described what she was seeing from the freshmen as kids who were motivated to act but tended to fall through with commitments. Without older students being models for underclassmen, newer students either lost interest or were intimidated with the task of reviving the club.
The recovery has taken a while, but is finally being seen through the club’s motivation and participation.
“Though the club doesn’t have a large number of members, the ones who are active seem to be very motivated,” said Greeley.
They have started the year with 2 Co-Presidents, a Vice President, and 5 Officers making up their executive board.
Co-President Bella Deoliveira has an optimistic vision for the future of the Environmental Club.
“In my last year of Environmental Club I want to make sure we are leaving a strong foundation for next year by having meetings more frequently and bringing back activities that have been successful in the past that haven’t been utilized during my time in the club,” said Deoliveira. “So it was important for me to have officers who I knew had ideas to revamp the club and were dedicated to following through with them, and luckily we were able to find them.”
Besides the rise in participation from students, the club has already been contacted by Trinity Church to aid in their annual fall cleanup.
“The club members are so hard-working, friendly, and obviously loved helping others in need,” said Ruth Ann Hutchinson, a member of the Building and Grounds Committee at Trinity Episcopal Church.
Besides their upcoming clean-up, the members are bringing back subcommittees. So far they have multiple in the works with one of them already up and running. This sub-committee is in charge of the Environmental Club newsletter that is posted on their own website they have launched just this past month.
“In our last newsletter, we included articles about what the environmental [science] class is doing with the Ipswich River.” Said Chief Journalist Braydan Hirshon. They also promote community service events that all students are welcome to attend.
Though the subcommittees weren’t officially launched, those in charge of the newsletter took the new task on immediately, accomplishing things that may seem small but are big steps in growing the Environmental Club.