| Founded | 2002 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Coral Gables, Florida, USA |
| Key people | Carl E. Lewis, Ph.D., Director, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden |
| Website | Fairchild Challenge |
The Fairchild Challenge is an environmental education outreach program of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida, USA.[1]
Contents |
The Fairchild Challenge is designed to promote environmental awareness, scholarship and stewardship in students in grades pre-K through 12th, and by extension in their families, schools and communities, through a combination of hands-on research, creativity and a variety of competitive projects.[2]
Launched in fall 2002, The Fairchild Challenge was developed by scientific and educational experts in botany and biology under the direction of Caroline Lewis.
The interdisciplinary nine-month program is offered free every academic year to public and private elementary schools throughout South Florida. [3] middle schools[4] and high schools,[5] It is financed by numerous private and public sources, as well as by fundraising by the Fairchild Garden’s young professionals’ organization, Fairchild Palms. During the 2007-2008 school year, participants included 22,000 students from 56 middle schools,[6] and 18,000 students from 46 high schools[7] - a total of 40,000 students ages 11 through 18 and 1,800 teachers from more than 100 South Florida schools.[8] Many thousands more participate annually in satellite programs run by educators trained by The Fairchild Challenge personnel at museums, zoos and other institutions throughout the United States and abroad. The program makes special efforts to support the participation of disabled and economically disadvantaged students.
The Fairchild Challenge consists of three parallel programs for elementary, middle and high schools. Individual schools compete on up to a dozen projects aligned with Florida education standards. In addition to the sciences, the projects cover social studies, English, art, music and vocational classes. They include generating newsletters, oral histories, and opinion and research papers; creating artwork, postcards, political/environmental cartoons, posters and T-shirts; performing songs and skits on stage; creating and/or restoring gardens or designated habitats; conducting oral debates; preparing “green cuisine” meals; designing solar-powered devices; and undertaking ecological initiatives such as recycling, conducting waste and energy audits, and initiating tree plantings at home, at school and in their communities. Every project completed scores points, and top-scoring schools are recognized with Fairchild Challenge Awards at a ceremony at Fairchild Garden at the end of each school year.[9]
Since its founding in 2002, The Fairchild Challenge has spread beyond South Florida by conducting “satellite” training for dozens of museums, zoos, botanical gardens and other institutions throughout the U.S. (Chicago [10] and Utah[11]) and as far as Singapore and South Africa. These institutions provide their own customized Fairchild Challenge programs for their area schools based on the original South Florida model.
In November, 2008, The Fairchild Challenge was endorsed by the Conservation Fund’s National Forum on Children and Nature (NFCN) as a worldwide model for connecting youth with the environment in new and creative ways.[12] The NFCN, composed of leaders from the public and private sectors, selected the Fairchild Challenge from among 560 competing programs based on relevance, impact and sustainability. The endorsement also was given to 29 other organizations in 2008.
The endorsement by the NFCN was featured in the Environment section of The Miami Herald on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009.[13]