In just a few weeks, U of G student Sara Wicks will be standing in front of a crowd of teenagers at an elite private school halfway around the globe. Her purpose? To encourage youth to take a stand for the environment.
It’s something she’s been doing for the past five years in Ontario, but Wicks will soon take her message to an international audience as a presenter and workshop leader at a teen conference in Qatar March 11 to 13.
The opportunity to spread the environmental message in the Middle East is one that Wicks, a fourth-year international development student, never dreamed was possible when she first joined Reduce the Juice, a small youth-driven non-profit organization that encourages people to reduce their energy consumption and develop initiatives for green power projects.
It was 2006, and she was a senior at Westside Secondary School in Orangeville who just wanted to make a difference and encourage people to reduce their energy consumption. Today, Wicks is the group’s project manager and has played a key role in developing and executing several projects in the Waterloo region and Dufferin County, as well as raising public awareness about climate-change solutions throughout Ontario.
Over the past few years, Reduce the Juice has received some $250,000 from the Trillium Foundation of Ontario to support its projects.
“The opportunities I’ve had to learn and to advocate for simple behavioural changes that reduce the impact on the environment have been unbelievable,” she says.
The projects are varied. In 2008, she and her colleagues worked with the Waterloo Health Unit to conduct an air-quality project that focused on vehicle idling.
“Waterloo has some of the worst air quality in southern Ontario, so this was a major priority for them,” says Wicks, who took a year off from her studies at Guelph to manage the project full-time.
Last year, the group served as mentors to Grade 9 and 10 students at Waterloo Collegiate Institute who refurbished a 1913 Ford Model T into a solar-powered vehicle.
“They built it from the ground up,” says Wicks, noting that additional mentorship was provided by members of the University of Waterloo alternative fuels team. “They came with nothing, they had a plan and they made it happen.”
This semester, a new group of Waterloo Collegiate students is working with Reduce the Juice and some engineering students from the University of Waterloo to convert a 1985 Volkswagen pickup truck into an electric vehicle. The truck, which is owned by a delivery driver for the Waterloo Town Square farmers’ market, will be used to transport organic vegetables, says Wicks.
The same group also plans to build a prototype for a bike-powered generator that will eventually power local community events and public awareness programs.
“If all goes well, we actually hope to have it ready to go by Earth Day,” says Wicks, who recently secured $1,000 from The Co-operators Limited to help fund the project.
She prepared a case for the initiative and submitted it for consideration at the Co-operators Youth Conference for Sustainability in Leadership, which was held on campus in September. She was among 12 applicants from across Canada who received a total of $47,000 to support their environmental efforts.
“We’d like the prototype to become part of our travelling road show, which already features a moving trailer outfitted with solar panels and a wind turbine. Projects like this are popping up more and more these days, and it’s so cool to see them become a reality.”