Sunday, May 20, 2012

John's First Community Leadership Project



This is John’s first community leadership project to advance to the rank of green belt.  John is age 10 and currently a blue belt at Epic Martial Arts in Sag Harbor N.Y.  http://hamptonskarate.com

Waste kickers
My project is a beach clean up. With this project, I am trying to stop littering by removing waste and trash from Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. I am trying to encourage others to be active in their community by discovering that cleaning up the beach can actually be an enjoyable experience. I am trying to influence friends and others to continually clean up their environment and remain active in their community.


My inspiration for this project was my love towards sea life and to prevent them from getting harmed. You hear many stories of sea animals dying because they end up eating trash. Turtles in most cases confuse plastic bags as jellyfishes and end up dying because they cant breath. Dolphins get stuck in nets and ropes that people throw in the ocean. These are few of the many animals out in the ocean that get harm because people don’t treat beaches with respect and don’t take their garbage with them.


So on Mothers day, May 13th 2012, my cousins Alex and Christian and I, along with Sensei Michelle and my big sister Johanna went to Indian Wells Beach to clean up for an hour. I didn’t realize how much garbage we picked up. Between my two younger cousins and I, we filled a big white bag full of plastic bags, balloons, cans, bottles, and diapers. I was surprised to see how much garbage we picked up in such short amount of time and we only cleaned a small part of the beach. I do have to admit that I had a great time along with my cousins picking up garbage. I plan to keep doing this type of things in the future along with my family and friends. 


By John Saldana- Green belt candidate 5/18/12



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