Congratulations to Eleanor Roosevelt School, Walt Disney School, and Eneida Rabelo School in Recife, Brazil for an outstanding project! Using curriculum prepared by their teachers, elementary school students were involved in a wide variety of hands-on initiatives during the second semester of 1999.

Projects began with the preparation and demonstration of mini-composters, which were presented to other students in the schools, as well as to the community as a whole. One group of students utilized a trip to a botanical garden to learn about biodiversity and soil types in relation to organic composting, while another visited Brazil's Estacao Ecologica do Tapacura resort in search of facts about the Pau-Brasil tree. Later in the fall, sixth and seventh graders prepared an outdoor garden area, while third graders created another garden in which they used their new knowledge of composting to plant beans and corn. Throughout their vacation in December and January, students took turns returning to school to water, weed, and clean their garden.