700 million children around the world walk into primary schools each morning. These students are supported by parents, teachers, and communities that work to provide them with the best possible resources to advance their education. Unfortunately, one of the crucial factors responsible for the kind of physical, emotional, and intellectual growth that would allow each child to reach their full potential is often completely overlooked: the physical space they learn in each day.

Buildings have a critical impact on every child’s education. Yet most schools fall far short of providing the kind of healthy, sustainable, and stimulating environments that our children deserve. That’s why USGBC established the Center for Green Schools to actively promote the mission of a green school for every student in the world, within a generation.

My colleague, Rachel Gutter, only 31, has been leading the Center since its inception in 2010. She has been enormously successful in reaching over 25 million individuals, engaging them to join and promote the Center’s mission. After implementing programs across North America over the past two years, Rachel and the Center are proud to launch a global awareness campaign: The Green Apple Day of Service.

On Sept. 29, 2012 (and every year after), Rachel Gutter will lead the Center team, along with parents, principals, students, organizations, companies and a wide variety of community members across the world in participating in local acts of sustainable service to improve our children’s schools. While our mission of a green school for everyone within this generation is a long-term project, The Green Apple Day of Service proves that real changes can be made everyday, by anyone.

There are many ways you can participate in the Green Apple Day of Service, such as providing demonstrations on the importance of saving water and electricity, better recycling habits, or improving air quality. You can plant a vegetable garden, avoid plastics for a day, or advocate for vegetarianism. No project is too small to promote, innovate, implement and support sustainability.

The Center is asking everyone to register their projects at mygreenapple.org. You can also go there to get ideas for projects, or to join a local project near you. Each project registered brings us one step closer to brighter, healthier, sustainable futures for our children. Join the dedicated students, proud parents, inspiring teachers, progressive business executives, and fearless leaders in our crusade to build a better tomorrow for all. Let’s make this our shared legacy.

On Sept. 29, we will collectively demonstrate to the world that many hands doing small tasks can create momentous change. Because as Rachel says, “Where you learn matters.” We hope you’ll join us.

Leadership. Respect. Care for our future leaders. Leaving a legacy.

These shared core values make involvement from Interface for the Green Apple Day of Service a natural fit. So it will come as no surprise that Interface has signed on as one of the first corporate sponsors of the new Green Apple cause-marketing initiative from the Center for Green Schools at USGBC. In this role, we are excited to play a role in launching the inaugural Green Apple Day of Service and we’ve spent the last months preparing for this day.

Interface has a long history of community involvement and since 2005, has devoted a half-day during our annual sales meeting to volunteer in local communities throughout the Americas. Through these experiences, our employees see the lasting impact we can leave in just a few hours of work. We experience the increased camaraderie by working side-by-side in service and sharing in that feeling of giving. We take pride in working for a company that prioritizes community involvement. These “legacy projects” have become part of our culture and an expression of who we are. We are eager to extend our service efforts, creating more volunteer projects across a greater geographic area for the Green Apple Day of Service.
On September 29 (and many other days throughout the fall), thousands of volunteers will come together in support of healthy, sustainable schools, including K-12, colleges and universities.

Interface is proud to be partnering with the Center for Green Schools at USGBC and helping to extend their reach and create projects across the United States as well as around the world.

From carpet installations at educational facilities in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Charlotte, Austin TX and LaGrange GA, to school yard improvements at two schools in Georgia, Interface volunteers will be leaving their mark by improving the indoor and outdoor environments at schools across the United States. A creative reuse center in Boston that supports area educators will benefit from donations of recycled materials from carpet manufacturing. Further south, our Latin American colleagues are hosting projects in São Paulo and Curitiba, Brazil, installing carpet, planting flowers and trees and sharing the exciting ideas of biophilic design as we demonstrate the benefits of integrating nature into the school.

Participating in the Green Apple Day of Service has been a meaningful activity that has created new and deeper relationships with schools, clients and local USGBC Chapters. We are excited for the future, building off of this inaugural year to continue to create healthier, safer, more planet-friendly environments that inspire better learning for our children and communities.

The Green Apple Day of Service is less than a month away, but it’s not too late to plan something great! When I was in elementary school, we had a giant map of the United States painted on the blacktop. This simple picture let students have fun outside, use their imagination and learn about geography all at the same time. Whether it is a map of the United States, the globe, or an image about sustainability and healthy living, there's an easy way to scale your image to blacktop size, and make a great Day of Service project out of it.

1. Choose your image (ex: outline of the United States) and print it out on a simple piece of standard copy paper.
2. Using a ruler, draw a grid across the entire image with vertical and horizontal lines 1 inch apart, creating perfect squares with 1”x1” dimensions. Label each square with a number.
3. Now, head out to the blacktop and choose a space where you want the image (the space should have the same proportion of height to width as your original image). Be sure you have all of the permission you need from school administration to create your work of art. 
4. Using a yard stick to measure increments, lay down lines of painters tape to create perfect squares. Label these squares, with marker on the tape, with matching numbers corresponding to your small image.
5. Use sidewalk chalk to sketch the outline of the larger image on the blacktop, drawing one box at a time.
6. Remove the tape and fill in the outline with chalk numbers like “color by numbers.”
7. Now let your volunteers loose with paint and brushes! Be sure to check your local hardware store for safe, low-VOC outdoor paint.

For a more in depth description with illustrations, check out this website for great instructions.

This method is not only easy for the non-artist, but can be used for blacktops, walls, or banners. It’s also a great math lesson for teacher’s continued use throughout the school year. Oh, you are an artist? Then grab sidewalk chalk and have some fun by getting kids outside to express their creative side while breathing fresh air!

Now that school has already begun, it’s the perfect time to think about ways to get involved in the Green Apple Day of Service! Here are 10 great projects that any parent or teacher can plan for their classroom.

1. Natural light is wonderful. It can help ease eyestrain and lower power consumption, and best of all, it’s free. Have your students remove their artwork from the windows and hang it on an assigned wall or bulletin board. That way, you can let bright light shine in and turn off those overhead lights to save some power.
2. Check your air vents and make sure the air filters are clean, and the vents are free of dust and other allergens. If you’re going to use the air system in your school, make sure you’re doing your part to make that air as clean as it can be. That means when possible, open those windows and let the fresh air circulate through your classroom!
3. Bring students and parents together to clean your classroom. Make it a team effort to eliminate allergens, mold and other pollutants, and be sure to use environmentally friendly cleaning supplies!
4. Organize a trip to the local farmer’s market with your child’s classmates and their parents to learn more about seasonal, local vegetables. Let your child taste the different options to start making healthier, locally-grown lunches!
5. Get your neighbors together (grill-out, coffee hour) to teach them about alternative transportation, and help create carpool groups for school. And if you’re the driver, remember to turn off your car when stopped in the carpool line!
6. Decorate bins or boxes to use as recycling bins – make paper bins for each classroom, and plastics and aluminum bins for the cafeteria.
7. Bring the outdoors in! Have a gardening day – bring plants, pots, and soil to your school parking lot, and have students, parents and teachers help put together potted plants for each classroom at your school.
8. Let there be light! Switch out incandescent light bulbs in lamps or other small light fixtures to more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
9. Host an outdoor cleanup of your school– pick up trash, rake leaves, sweep sidewalks – you don’t even need to buy supplies!
10. Host a brainstorming session! Do you want to make big changes at your school, but don’t know how? Invite parents, faculty and staff to a brainstorming session to help develop ideas for how to improve your school!

Register your project today at mygreenapple.org! Have questions about the Day of Service? Contact me with any questions at 202-587-7170 or [email protected]. We hope you have a great, green school year!

Imagine the bathrooms at the school you attend or the school your children attend are out of order – what would you do? In the U.S., it’s likely the school would be closed for the day and children sent home until the repairs could be made. Unfortunately, in many places around the world, the school bathrooms are permanently out of order forcing children to go in the street. If that were the case – would you keep your child home from school?

All too often, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, that’s the choice that parents face and it frequently means that girls in particular stay home. While recent reviews of U.S. schools have estimated that 40 percent of our 100,000 public schools are in “bad to poor condition,” a recent UNICEF survey of 60 developing countries showed that more than 50 percent of schools in poor countries still lack the basics - safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities.

I work with CHF International, a non-profit humanitarian relief and development organization, and have seen the impact of poor quality schools first hand in Ghana. In 2010, the Ministry of Education in Ghana reported that only 50 percent of Ghana’s 36,822 schools have access to toilet facilities. CHF is working with the government, teachers, students and local partner organizations to improve school sanitation in the poorest slums in two of Ghana’s largest cities - Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi. We’re using rainwater harvested from the school roof and collected in tanks to flush the toilets and conserve precious water. Already schools have reported increased attendance rates, more frequent hand washing by children, and even families improving sanitation at their homes as a result of what their kids learned in school. (To learn more about why sanitation is such a huge global issue check out this creative graphic about what happens when you flush).

A key solution to improved schools is community involvement. With CHF’s help, the Government of Ghana just released a new strategy to promote community participation in solving access to clean water and sanitation. You can also get involved in raising awareness about the need for healthy learning environments in your community and around the world by joining CHF International in support of the Center for Green School’s Green Apple Day of Service on September 29. Working with our local community partners, CHF International will be organizing service projects in the cities of Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana, as well as in the West Bank, Colombia, India and near our headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Stay tuned for more details.

The countdown has begun. One month from now on September 29, the Center for Green Schools at USGBC will host the first annual Green Apple Day of Service, an initiative to have volunteers around the world participate in small acts of service to improve their local school environments. Now that kids are back in school, projects are showing up on the map at a record pace. But one of the things we hear more and more as we get closer to the date is: “I really want to get involved, but I’m worried that there isn’t enough time.”

Typically, this response comes from your average super-mom, who is making lunch, surfing the Internet, watching the news and texting her husband all at the same time. Not enough time? Moms like this pull off greater undertakings on a daily basis.

So if you fall into that category of super-parent-with-great-intentions-and-not-enough-time, here are six projects that you can do on the Green Apple Day of Service in less than 60 minutes to improve the places where your children learn.

1. Organize a scavenger hunt – Gather a few of your children’s friends and their parents, and make sure each person arrives on site with a digital camera or equipped phone. Have each team walk around your school grounds and take photographs of things that are good for people and the planet, and things that are harmful to people and the planet. Come back together to share your photos – perhaps even make a collage to present to your child’s class or the principal.
2. Host a coffee talk – Invite a small gathering of other parents to your house or the local coffee shop to discuss simple ways you can help schools become healthier, safer more efficient places for your kids to learn and play. Download our video beforehand and screen it at the event (it’s a crowd pleaser!)
3. Clean up your schoolyard – grab some trash bags and have your child invite a few friends to join them in the schoolyard to pick up trash and other pieces of litter. Make it fun by setting it up as a competition to see who can find the most trash or clean up their area the fastest. Have small prizes to give away for a job well done.
4. Make a video – have your children be the producers and instruct them make a creative and short video. Be sure that each of your actors holds a green apple and recites the phrase “I learn here and where I learn matters.” For examples of other kids doing this, you can watch our video.
5. Collect supplies – host a book and school supply drive. Invite parents to bring surplus supplies like extra crayons, barely used notebooks, backpacks or lunch boxes that can be shared with teachers or other families who can put them to good use. What a great form of recycling!
6. Decorate a recycling bin – find a large, sturdy old box or container. Set your kids up with some wrapping paper, glue, and if you dare, a little glitter. Help them to make a bold label that explains the materials that can be put in the box to be recycled. Donate it to your child’s classroom or the library.

Now that you have project ideas, don’t forget to add your event to our map! We need your help in making September 29 as successful as it can possibly be, and every little bit counts. For more information about how you can get involved, please visit mygreenapple.org.

Romania is a country with a deep, historical connection to agriculture and nature and includes some of Europe’s richest and largest (and most threatened) areas of biodiversity. A history of forced depopulation of the villages and industrialization removed many of the citizens from their connection to the land. Consequently, many school children seldom have the chance to experience nature, what it has to teach and benefits for mind, health and soul.

The Romania Green Building Council (RoGBC) recently launched the “Construieste Scoli Verzi” (Building Greener Schools) campaign to raise awareness about the benefits of green schools and to create rapid and comprehensive change in the environmental and energy performance of Romania's kindergartens, schools and universities. We are pleased to collaborate with the Center for Green Schools to mobilize the country in improving its schools by supporting the Green Apple Day of Service. We are organizing a number of projects for the Green Apple Day of Service, some on our own and some in collaboration with other organizations.

One of our biggest initiatives is a campaign for the Green Apple Day of Service. Donations received from local green building companies are used for a green schools contest, to award a winning school a substantial green renovation including planning and design services, project management, ecological building materials and coatings, sustainable landscaping, and energy efficient and renewable energy solutions. Through this campaign, we will be able to provide a tangible example for students, educators, government officials and the building community to see directly the benefits of what green schools can provide to Romania. All schools in Romania who submit and conduct and activity for the Green Apple Day of Service are eligible to win this green renovation.

In addition, we have several other activities planned for Sept. 29:

• We will deliver a training course entitled "Creating and Managing Greener Schools" on September 29, available to school directors, administrative personnel, teachers, parents and students to teach the “why” and “how to” of green schools.
• We will award two scholarships for school building administrators to attend a 10-course Green Building Professional program.
• We will organizing a workshop for school children in the village of Cacica, Romania to learn about the “deep green” renovation of their library Ecobiblioteca, a demonstration project organized and funded by RoGBC and its partner companies. The project is in the final stages of construction and designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification and Living Building Challenge Full Petal recognition.
• The RoGBC also assisted the International School of Cluj in Romania with conducting two integrated design sessions for optimizing a new green campus initiative. We are particularly pleased to work with this school as they have consistently won awards as a top educational institution in Romania. In addition, they currently provide tours and outreach to help the public schools of Romania understand how they achieve their academic excellence. Therefore the selection of this school as a green school demonstration will be sure to influence key decision makers throughout Romania as they witness academic and environmental excellence in action. We will continue to provide technical and other support for the project through its completion.

We at RoGBC look forward to expanding collaboration with our friends working to create greener schools around and wish everyone a successful and fun Green Apple Day of Service!

As the summer days are winding down, the Center for Green Schools is gearing up for the upcoming school year and the Green Apple Day of Service on Saturday, Sept. 29. We want to make sure you’re all fully equipped with what do to on the Day of Service to make it as successful as it can be! That’s why we’re starting “Ripe Idea,” a social media initiative that will inform our audiences about Day of Service happenings, topics, ideas and fun facts leading up to Sept. 29.

Ripe Idea will run weekly leading up to the Day of Service, and will feature ideas in five different categories: project ideas, engaging support, motivational support, spreading the word, and spotlights. You can find our great ideas on Twitter, Facebook, our blog and LinkedIn, so be sure you are following our pages and checking back regularly! And don’t forget when you see a Ripe Idea be sure to re-tweet or share via other channels.

Have any Ripe Ideas you think we should feature? Let us know! We’re always welcoming innovative and out-of-the box initiatives for the Day of Service.

See you on September 29!

Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to Seattle for our very first Day of Service project. I joined the Seattle Mariners, Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Sounders and Seattle Storm, along with Washington Green Schools and Seattle Public Schools, the Green Sports Alliance, Skanska, community volunteers and students from Denny International Middle School and Chief Sealth High School to conduct a service project to gain momentum leading up to the official Green Apple Day of Service on Sept. 29.

The goal for the day was to expand the garden. We were tasked with building three plant beds and filling them with compost, soil, and plants, installing shelves in the tool shed and building a few benches. There were 22 middle and high school students there to join including the garden clubbers and some of the school’s athletes, new Seattle Public Schools Superintendent José Banda, an amazing crew from Skanska, the Washington Green Schools program, Cedar Grove Composting who even donated a truckload of composted soil, as well as players past and present from the Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders and Storm.

In four hours we unloaded the soil, built three beds, two benches, planted kiwi, lavender, blueberries, strawberries and flowers, made an amazingly tasty lunch with ingredients from the garden, got really smelly and pretty much had the greatest day ever. The players were super engaged and excited to be there. I showed the Mariners relief pitcher Lucas Luetge (who pitched half an inning later that night!) how to plant a lavender bush and helped Superintendent Banda put a blueberry bush in the ground. They had a great time. The team from Skanska taught the kids about the company’s “Stretch and Flex” program which encourages job site safety and about being great advocates for Green Apple Day of Service.

This project realized everything Day of Service has the potential to be:

- A diverse group of students engaged and excited to get dirty and learn new things.
- Community organizations and companies partnering together for a great cause (including local celebs!)
- Local media coverage - West Seattle Herald as well as a couple of local news outlets and the sports radio station
- Hard work with tangible results and something the community put their sweat into, will maintain, and be proud of.

Start to finish, the trip to Seattle could not have been better. Our new friends from the Mariners, Skanska and the Green Sports Alliance treated us like family the entire week, and we even got to spend an evening on the owner's suite at the Mariners game. It was awesome, but was really just a treat on top of the experience we had the day before yesterday.

Thanks to everyone who made this day such a success, and we're look forward to many more projects like this to come!

For the last four years I have been able to see the green schools movement grow out of the communities USGBC represents. The Green Schools Committee volunteers and the chapter staff that support them are working around the clock, every day of the year to improve learning environments in their communities. The people I have the privilege of working with over email, phone and webcast are making real change happen at the local, state and national level. And being at USGBC’s mid-year meeting this past week, I was reminded that the people I get to work with are just one part of the impact our “USGBC family” continues to have.

I’ve been in this family for a little over four years now, and I’ve seen many of the members doing great things. Each of our events have marked a turning point for the green building movement, and you all were there with us. You are the developers, the early adopters, the advocates and champions.

We applaud you and thank you…but we’re not done with you.

We are calling on our community once again to contribute your support, your expertise and your insistence that buildings can be better to a new challenge. On September 29, the Green Apple Day of Service will show the world that we are going to continue to shake up the way people think about the places they and their children learn.

More than 200 communities around the world have already committed to spend one day – just one day – to transform the way they think about schools:

• In Miami, the South Florida Chapter will lead a school garden project at an elementary school.
• In Ethiopia, an NGO will introduce composting programs to local schools.
• In London Ohio, a public middle school will celebrate a LEED Platinum plaque ceremony.
• In Shanghai, a design firm will host a discussion about sustainable school design.
• In Seattle, the Mariners will plant trees at a local school.
• In Romania, a community will celebrate the opening of a new green library.
• In Staten Island, New York, they’ll integrate the arts into energy conservation efforts.
• Throughout the southeast one company – TLC Engineering – has committed to projects in nine different cities – on one day.

We can do incredible things on September 29, but not without your help. Many of you have already committed to organizing a project on Green Apple Day of Service. More than 200 communities have put themselves on the map at mygreenapple.org, telling us and the world that where we learn really does matter, and that on one day, they’re going to do something about it.

Who of you will make a commitment today to transform learning environments in your own back yard?

Once you’ve got your project on the map – and for those of you here tonight who already have – there’s another way for you to show your support for better learning environments.

Pick up a green apple – they’re easy to find...you can even use a fake one. Take it to a place where you learn and take a picture. Upload that picture to mygreenapple.org/welearnhere. You can start today!

By collecting photos of real schools, for better or worse, we can show the world what a healthy, high-performing school looks like, or remind them of the work we still need to do. Both are equally important. By sharing your photo with us, you’re taking meaningful action to show that you support healthy, high performing and sustainable schools. You’re showing us where you or your child learns. And you’re demonstrating that where we learn matters.