Hey! Feeling like recylcing may be a priority of yours or perhaps leaving a small footprint in keeping the world healthy? Try the Young Environmentalist Society. This club allows you to learn “how to do personal, independent things that can make some kind of incremental step to being more environmentally friendly,” says Mrs. Houvouras, the sponsor for the YES club. You may be wondering why you haven’t heard of this club, well that may be because it had to start a bit later then intended. When asking Mrs. Houvouras what the reason was for the late start, she replied, “We didn’t have to start later, it’s just that no students really seemed very interested the first semester. The club has always been in existence but no student stepped up to be in the leadership roles. No one contacted me to say, ‘hey are we doing this?’ Until Madeline did, right after winter break.” When Madeline Barber, the President of YES, was asked about why the club had to be started so late, she mentioned she started the club late because she “didn’t know it was still an option on campus.” She also brought up the teacher shortage and how she “assumed the club teacher was one of” the teachers that left.

The late start certainly didn’t result in the club losing popularity. When asking Mrs. Houvouras how many students show up to the club, she mentioned, “In the last few meetings we have had about 30 people show up.” This is incredible news, that even though the club started late it seemed to have gained popularity fast. When asking Madeline what may have caused students not to join she explained “responsibility” saying, “It’s a lot of responsibility to manage a club, especially one that plans volunteer work. You have to contact adults in charge at any organization you want to be involved in, or try to coordinate a bunch of teenagers to attend a meeting instead of having free-time. It’s a little daunting.” 

One of the activities the YES club partakes in is recycling. Mrs. Houvouras also mentioned, “a lot of on campus activities,” possibly even a “campus clean up” when it gets scheduled. Some plans the club has is “taking over the greenhouse from the Agriculture department to learn how to grow edible foods,” they also plan to schedule some off-campus activities as “Madeline has made some contact with some gardening clubs, tree planting organizations, things like that they can do outside of the school community,” says Mrs. Houvouras. When asking Madeline about some of the activities the club partakes in, she also mentioned many on campus activites however, she also mentioned “gardening events planned for this month,” going back to that Mrs. Houvouras said about the contacts Madeline has made. The YES club obviously does a lot to help the environment and works hard to be able to conduct these activities and evironmental goals.

The YES club volunteers after school and on weekends. Monday through Thursday you can catch the YES club in crews doing recycling runs. Feel free to check out the YES club and their goals for young environmentalist. They meet after school on Tuesdays in room 539.