This year’s Green Apple Day of Service is behind us, and volunteers at more than 2,000 schools and campuses joined us to make an impact. Projects took place in all 50 U.S. states and 40 countries, with participants showing that their communities are committed to healthy, safe and sustainable schools. Every dot on the map at mygreenapple.org represented a different commitment to better schools and a team effort from start to finish. Team is a word that comes so easily when talking about what we do at USGBC, and it’s one that we try not to take for granted. It's moments like Green Apple Day of Service that remind me that our team is so much more than the people who “officially" work at USGBC. 

Our team is all of my USGBC colleagues, dozens of whom came out to organize and volunteer at local Day of Service events. Friends from LEED, Community, marketing, events, business development, GBCI, advocacy and operations worked with students, teachers and parents to clean up campuses, plant and rejuvenate gardens, teach young people about recycling and resource conservation and more.

It is the volunteers and leadership in 77 USGBC Chapters. Once again, 100 percent of chapters organized events across the U.S., including 99 in the Delaware Valley, more than 50 across Massachusetts and Illinois, and one flagship event right here in DC.

Our team includes our Green Apple partners, who organized events around the world, from Brazil to Brooklyn, Santa Monica to Singapore.

It is the thousands of USGBC member companies and LEED Professionals who participated in service projects around the world, earning LEED Continuing Educations hours while they were at it!

Our team is the group of girls in Bangladesh who painted flower pots and learned to grow their own flowers. It is the mom in the Bay Area who enlisted her teenage daughters to teach the masses about green schools during a San Francisco Giants game. It is school leaders in Missouri who enrolled in a Green Schools Quest, committing to engage their students in recycling, resource conservation, and some healthy competition. The Green Apple Day of Service is all of these students, teachers, families and other individuals who believe that where we learn matters, and who came together this fall to show it.

To learn more about this year's Day of Service, visit mygreenapple.org. 

Global Communities supports Green Apple Day of Service worldwide.

Every year at Global Communities, we see the increasingly negative effect of climate change on the lives and livelihoods of our partner communities in more than 20 countries worldwide.

Our work involves supporting local governments in providing necessary services to their citizenry and can involve building schools, clinics, citizen service centers and other critical infrastructure. We see firsthand the places where they struggle to afford the energy and maintenance costs in community schools and clinics and where water is scarce.

In response to this, we are committed to developing green construction techniques, and have already been leading the way in, for example, the West Bank and Kosovo.

Joining the green schools movement

To support that commitment, we joined USGBC as a member, and later started working with the Center for Green Schools, an organization committed to safe, healthy and efficient schools. And last year we proudly supported the Green Apple Day of Service, an initiative that improves schools through local service projects.

We enthusiastically joined this movement, because it offered the potential to more directly engage the private sector in working with communities to raise awareness and improve conditions in schools. Last year, working with local partners and corporate volunteers including USGBC members like Caterpillar and Interface, Global Communities supported projects in six countries involving more than 30 schools and 4,000 volunteers. We planted trees, beautified school grounds, organized recycling and clean-up campaigns, conducted energy audits and pledged to continue to work together for the longer term to green our schools.

Our 2013 project plans: Improving sanitation, solid waste management at low-income schools

Our Green Apple 2013 journey officially began Sept. 19, with our first event in a small indigenous village in Colombia, and then traveled east to the low-income communities of Pune and Bangalore in India, launching a week of activities with more than 10 schools and colleges focused on improving sanitation and solid waste management. The journey continues with events with two schools in Nairobi, Kenya, a school in the West Bank, and with the most impoverished elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, near our headquarters in Silver Spring. Our celebration of the Green Apple Day of Service will come full circle to Colombia on October 4, when our team will help a village protect a stream – their only source of drinking water – and install bathrooms in the community school.

On September 28, I rolled up my sleeves and worked side by side with students, parents and teachers at Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring. Volunteers from Global Communities, IMPACT Silver Spring and other area organizations helped weed new vegetable beds the school has created in an interior courtyard and picked up trash around the school and neighboring park. Our efforts here paralleled the efforts of my colleagues overseas as we worked together to help adapt to climate change worldwide. It also provided Global Communities a welcome opportunity to support our own local community here in Silver Spring.  

The seeds planted and friendships formed at a one-day service event can lead to lasting relationships that support long-term community-driven change. We’re already looking ahead to 2014 and how we can continue to grow our Green Apple Day of Service connections and reach more communities with the message that where children learn really does matter. 

I joined several of my USGBC colleagues for a fantastic Green Apple Day of Service at Gladys Noon Spellman Elementary School in Cheverly, MD, my new neighborhood. As students came by to work on the school garden, paint rocks, learn about butterflies and more, we were reminded of some of life's most important lessons that hold as true in the workplace as they do in the schoolyard:

1. Criticizing another person's garden doesn’t keep the weeds out of your own.
2. Lots of hands working together have a big impact.
3. If you can’t work together nicely, don’t work together at all!
4. Own up to your mistakes and always learn from them.
5. Play fair.

Schools are living laboratories, not only for kids, but for adults too!  Green Apple Day of Service reminded us that where we learn matters. After all, the lessons we learn at school stay with us for life.

There was one more lesson we learned as we toiled away in Spellman's garden: Mother Nature is a tough cookie, and we've all got to pitch in to take care of her! 

In the final installment of of the Green Apple Day of Service Spotlight, I got a chance to speak with Cindy Thompson about a service project she is heading up this year, taking advantage of the resources her mother can help her access as the school's principal.

What stuck with me the most after this conversation were Cindy's comments about Day of Service being a chance to show others that the U.S. Green Building Council is more than just LEED certifications; it's an organization with a much bigger goal of achieving a sustainable, healthy, and comfortable existence for all. For an intern working closely with the Center for Green Schools this seems totally obvious, so our conversation was a much-needed reminder that it might be less apparent to those who don't come into the USGBC office on a daily basis.

Cindy is absolutely right, of course. The Day of Service is certainly important because of the positive impact it has on the students who attend schools that benefit from volunteer projects, but there's more to it than that. It's a day to show people that green buildings really do make a difference in our lives, starting with the generation of our world's future big thinkers and game changers.

To see last year's Day of Service highlights, view projects that are happening in your area, or to register a project of your own, check out www.mygreenapple.org. 

For our first year as an official group at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles, California, our USGBC Students group have decided to kick off the semester with a Green Apple Day of Service project. We've decided to host a project that is close to home and utilizes some of our campus’ unique features. With these intentions in mind, the USGBC Students in partnership with the LMU Office of Sustainability, will host a Garden Learning Day for the children of the LMU Children’s Center on campus. This event will be held in the LMU Inspiration Organic & Native Sustainability (LIONS) Garden located on our campus. This special place was established as the result of a grassroots student effort in 2011 and continues to evolve as a flourishing, multifaceted community space that demonstrates LMU’s commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility. Our project’s goal is to engage the garden as a an outdoor learning laboratory to teach the children about where our food comes from, and the benefits of growing organic produce as opposed to buying food at a supermarket.

Los Angeles is well known for being an increasingly urban environment. For this reason the concept of where our fruits and vegetables come from can be difficult for children in this area to grasp. Many children do not understand that the produce found in a typical grocery store must first be grown, harnessing the Earth’s invaluable resources. Building upon the Children Center curriculum of where our food comes from and using the LIONS Garden as a living example of food production, we will be able to tangibly show them how our food is grown and that we can eat it right out of the garden. Additionally, we plan to create interactive activities with the children to show them that by growing vegetables ourselves in a local environment, we avoid the use of pesticides as well as the costs and resources associated with transporting produce to grocery stores for purchase. 

After learning about some of the project examples for the Green Apple Day of Service on the website, I immediately wanted to incorporate the LIONS Garden at LMU. As a staff member of the Office of Sustainability and student at LMU I have spent a lot of time working with others to maintain the garden, and as a result, I enjoy and learn from the garden as well.  Why not share the knowledge we have gained as students working in the LIONS garden with the children of the LMU community?  After all, these children have the potential to be future LMU students, gardeners and stewards of the Earth.

In this second installment of the Green Apple Day of Service Spotlight, members of the Center for Green Schools at USGBC team took some time out of their busy schedules to tell me a bit about the different projects they have teamed up to coordinate.

For Nick, Jenny, and Anisa, the Day of Service is exciting because it gives them the chance to connect with schools in their neighborhoods even if they don't have friends or family working or learning in those buildings. Volunteering serves as a kind of grounding mechanism, putting them in touch with other folks committed to sustainable and productive schools that they might not otherwise encounter, and enabling them to see firsthand what educational facilities really need to go green.

The variation across their different projects also speaks to how inclusive Day of Service is — you don't have to be an architect or an environmental expert to take part. For those that like to get their hands dirty, there are projects like Nick's that need people to roll up their sleeves and help with some essential but non-technical tasks. Or, if you want to become more knowledgeable about what actually goes into making a school green, there are projects like Anisa and Jenny's designed to bring essential information to those hoping to make a difference. I know it sounds cliché, but there really is something for everybody.

To see last year's Day of Service highlights, view projects that are happening in your area, or to register a project of your own, check out www.mygreenapple.org. 

In this second installment of the Green Apple Day of Service Spotlight, members of the Center for Green Schools at USGBC team took some time out of their busy schedules to tell me a bit about the different projects they have teamed up to coordinate.

For Nick, Jenny, and Anisa, the Day of Service is exciting because it gives them the chance to connect with schools in their neighborhoods even if they don't have friends or family working or learning in those buildings. Volunteering serves as a kind of grounding mechanism, putting them in touch with other folks committed to sustainable and productive schools that they might not otherwise encounter, and enabling them to see firsthand what educational facilities really need to go green.

The variation across their different projects also speaks to how inclusive Day of Service is — you don't have to be an architect or an environmental expert to take part. For those that like to get their hands dirty, there are projects like Nick's that need people to roll up their sleeves and help with some essential but non-technical tasks. Or, if you want to become more knowledgeable about what actually goes into making a school green, there are projects like Anisa and Jenny's designed to bring essential information to those hoping to make a difference. I know it sounds cliché, but there really is something for everybody.

To see last year's Day of Service highlights, view projects that are happening in your area, or to register a project of your own, check out www.mygreenapple.org. 

With the second annual Green Apple Day of Service fast approaching, it's a great time to find out what kinds of projects volunteers are undertaking as part of the global effort to make all schools a healthy, sustainable, and a comfortable environment for the students and staff that walk through school doors on a daily basis.

To get a better sense of the scope of Day of Service and what motivates volunteers to take part in this great initiative, I sat down with some USGBC staff to chat with them about projects they are planning themselves. Boy, did I learn a lot. Even after only talking to a few people, it was becoming increasingly evident to me that this was really an opportunity for people from all kinds of backgrounds, and with all types of skill sets, to take the movement to green all schools within a generation and make it their own. 

These conversations were just too good not to share, and I hope the Green Apple Day of Service Spotlight, a mini series of video excerpts from our discussions, illustrates the breadth of potential encapsulated in this event. In this first installment, Tim Taylor describes his eagerness to volunteer at the school he once attended himself, building on the success of some already existing environmentally friendly features.

To see last year's Day of Service highlights, view projects that are happening in your area, or to register a project of your own, check out www.mygreenapple.org. 

Green Apple is made possible by our generous and supportive partners like Interface. Not only does Interface give resources to Green Apple to ensure that we can run our initiative to show the world that where we learn matters, but they live that philosophy by doing good works on the ground in their communities as well.

Below is a dispatch from their recently completed Green Apple Day of Service event in Brazil:

At Interface giving back is an inherent part of becoming the restorative company we wish to be. “Restorative” refers to more than what we make and how we make it. It’s also about people – all of us – and the communities in which we live, work and play.

Community projects have long been a part of many of our meetings throughout the Americas, but the upcoming Green Apple Day of Service is an opportunity to serve others on a global scale. Last year Interface associates in Latin America assisted two schools in poor communities within Sao Paulo, Brazil, educating students about the importance of our environment and how social responsibility can change lives.

We met the most wonderful children. We worked with them in their patio, planting lots of flowers and food for them to grow and harvest for their families. We also read books to them, and most importantly, we talked to them. These kids had been exposed to so many things — good and bad. Being able to show them new possibilities was amazing. They responded with affection and didn’t mind getting dirty with us since we were working to make their day a better one.

We enjoyed it so much that we’re gearing up for it again. On September 28, 2013, we plan to make an even greater impact as our dealers and local sponsors work with us on projects for poor community schools in cities from Argentina to Mexico. We plan to engage these kids to change, to see a future beyond their school walls. We want to help them realize how much their teachers have to give them and how much we care about them as we work on projects that will make their facilities a better place to be.

 And we will get back as much, if not more, than we will give. 

Need a little help with your Green Apple Day of Service project? We're giving away three Visa gift cards to help you transform your school into a healthy, safe, cost-efficient and productive learning space where students have clean and healthy air to breathe, and where energy and resources are conserved.

It's as simple as 1, 2, 3...

Step 1: Download the free Green Apple - Where we Learn Matters app on your iPhone or iPad
Step 2: Take a photo of yourself (or a friend!) outside/inside your school or a school in your neighborhood using the Green Apple app. 

Step 3: Share the photo to Facebook using the hashtag #greenapplecontest to be entered to win!

Photos will be judged by a panel of USGBC staff based on the quality of the photo and the photo's ability to show that “where we learn matters.” This can be displayed in a number of creative ways, highlighting either problems that exist within your learning space, or awesome green initiatives that your school is already doing. 

The best news? You've got three chances to win! We'll be giving out $50, $100, and $500 gift cards throughout the contest period, plus some cool Green Apple gear like water bottles and t-shirts. While you're snapping pictures, why not sign up for a Green Apple Day of Service project in your area, or create your own? Any project counts AND makes a difference, no matter the size.

You must be 18 or older to enter this contest. Ask a teacher, parent, or older student to enter with you! For more contest rules, click here.