Welcome the Saint Saviours Chapter of Roots & Shoots.

Roots & Shoots, a program of the Jane Goodall Institute, is a powerful, youth-driven, global network of tens of thousands of members in more than 110 countries. Together, youth of all ages are taking action to improve our world through service learning projects that promote care and concern for animals, the environment and the human community

3/18, 3/19 - Well done Ashley, Charity, Maria, Jackie for pasting the school with our new Department of Sanitation Recycling decals. Also getting out Pope Benedicts message condemning cruelty to animals. The Pope emphasizes that the mis-treatment of animals in such ways as fois gras practices and caging chickens is inconsistent with biblical teachings. The more informed our community is, the easier it will be for them to make informed and smarter decisions about what they eat and what they are contributing to. All this is important information for our community. Thanks also to Gissel, Jessica and Jennifer for offering to lend a hand.

At our 2/24/09 meeting We watched an inspirational video from Jane at TED. Take a look for yourself. Thanks to Jackie, Ashley and Jennifer for working to help improve our schools recycling capabilities. We went to the Department of Sanitation website and ordered a bunch of free stuff to help educate our community on the responsibilities we all have to help our planet. See the Department of Sanitations thank you email to us here!

We also talked about our future plans and what we want to accomplish. We watched a video from Animal Aid about Meatless Mondays (Watch for yourself!) and discussed getting together a petition. Jackie also had a great idea about making items like jewelry or bags from recyclable objects to sell to raise money to adopt a chimpanzee from Jane Goodalls chimp guardianship. Nice work ladies!

12/21/09 - Conclusion of our needs drive. Thank you to all who particpated in making it quite a success. Here is a link to the Empty Cages blog thanking us for all our efforts. Read it and be proud.  

12/16/09 Meeting - Thanks to Anetta, Jessica, Ashley, Maria, Jackie, Gissel for helping out .

1. another great Jane Goodall video - adopt a orphan monkey.
2. Talk about needs drive. Badger students and pet stores.
3. collect any donations in boxes throughout the school
4. recycling research

12/9/09 Meeting

1. Nice job done by all. Ashley Blain, Ayesha Niass, Jackie De Venecia, Jennifer Calabrese, and Gissel Rivera for scouring the buidling for boxes and decorating them.
2. Look on the Recycle Center Page and follow the link to try to find free recycling receptacles for the classrooms.  

11/18/09 Meeting:

1. Jane Goodall on The Daily Show.     
2. Cultural Harmony Day - Unfortunately we could not pull off being represented. That should not stop us.     Root's N Shoots encourages all those participating to try to choose cruelty free recipes for Cultural Harmony Day.  Consider "Going Cold Turkey"!
3. Awesome job done by Charity Fisher, Maria Stoupakis, Jennifer Calabrese and Jackie deVenecia decorating our Needs drive boxes. We have only 6 more to decorate. 
4. Thanks to Ilin Quan and Aneta Siwiec for scouring the building to collect data on the state of recycling in our classrooms.
5. Great job by Ashley Blain creating our fact of the week about Turkeys. Check it out on the bulletin board on the stairs.

10/28/09 Meeting - We need more people showing up to meetings!

We talked briefly about the needs drive for the Animal Shelter. We are planning on having a drive to collect donations for animals in need. Please help out as much as you can in your free time. We want to have a box for donations in each homeroom by the first week in November. We can do this. Everyone chip in and help.

Awesome job by Maria Stoupakis and Jennifer Callabrese for getting our Weekly fact sheet about Pandas together. We need to get our message out there! Maria and Jennifer also learned how to use Photoshop and our wiki in interesting ways. So if you are interested in learning Photoshop and wikis, come to the meetings. 

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Here are the issues we discussed tackling at the last meeting (09/30/09):

1. Recycle bins/bags for all classrooms - Ilin Quan
2. Contact a local animal shelter to find out how we can help - Maria Stoupakis
3. Fundraising - (lunchbox idea...)
4. Our presence at Cultural Harmony Day (November 25)
5. Weekly fact sheets around the school about the plight of a different animal.
6. Meatless Mondays, more vegetarian/vegan options in the cafeteria - Tara Mulholland
7. Saint Saviour Garden
8. Trip to Farm Sanctuary

We had a great meeting and you all had a ton of great ideas. I congratulate you for joining and look forward to working with you helping animals, people and the environment together. As we continue throughout the year we will expand this space to include all the amazing things we accomplish together. We will explore using this space as our "home base" for information about the group. It's a great way to learn how wiki's work and how we can make them work for us. For example: I've uploaded the Roots"N"Shoots handbook to the Pages and Files section of this wiki. At the top right hand corner of this page, click on the Pages and Files link, then click the "All Files" section on the left side of the page. Then you will see a file called rshandbook.pdf. Browse through when you have some free time.

Here's a link to the Roots & Shoots page, check it out: http://www.rootsandshoots.org/

In the News  - click here to find see stories about issues important to Roots & Shoots.