Calendar fundraiser to increase native trees on campus
Photo by used courtesy of Mrs. Abe
Digital Photography students surround the calendar they created as a fundraiser to increase the amount of endemic plants on campus. The calendars sold out within a week.
Digital Photography has produced a calendar whose proceeds are going toward the planting of endemic Hawaiian plants around the high school campus.
The calendar consists of photos of the Native Hawaiian plants currently in scattered places around the school.
Junior Christiana Alo suggested the fund-raising project.
“We made roughly almost about $1,500,” said Mrs. Abe, the D. Photo teacher, “and we’re gonna use 100% of that to go towards the purchase of trees.”
Planting these Native Hawaiian trees could encourage the iʻiwi population, which has been slowly moving to lower elevations, to make homes on the campus.
“Maybe we’ll even encourage some of the native birds to come down here because we hear that they’re struggling up in the higher elevations,” Mrs. Abe said
She said that the plan to plant 15-20 trees in front of the greenhouse near the art building.
“We hope that the trees will promote positive climate change and support the protection of other Native Hawaiian plants and animals,” read the flyer used to promote the calendar
Every year, Mrs. Abe’s class makes a calendar as a lesson, in which the students go around the campus and photograph plants. This year, there was a group of students who were interested in shooting endemic Hawaiian plants.
The project took about 3 weeks to make, starting in November, and they sold out the almost 200 calendars in a week.
“It was a lot of work,” Mrs. Abe said. “It even called for outside time, so kids had to come in on their Saturdays.”
People were still asking about the calendars even after they had sold out, but they were sold by preorder, which means the sales were a one-time thing.
Both the elementary and middle school campuses were interested in having the calendars sold at their locations, but the class could only sell a certain amount, so they were forced to keep it to only the high school.
The project is a perennial favorite, so you need to keep an eye out for the flyers when they become available each winter. The calendars have sold out every year.
” I could foresee this being a lot bigger,” Mrs. Abe said.
