Abington High School Wins Enviro Award

The Abington Senior High School H2O for Life Club received the Environmental Community Service Award from NBC, WAWA and the Law Firm of Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox, LLP last week. The club had to apply for the award, coming up with different ways in which they would use $5,000 to “promote service that focuses on environmental and quality of life issues.”

The club won the $5,000. 

The Club’s 50 or so members, who already teach a class called “Watershed Citizenship,” said they would hold the high school water summit for at least two more years to educate other high school students about local and global water issues; work with the Abington Environmental Advisory Council to fund additional Riparian buffers; launch an anti-littering campaign that would include painting four trash trucks with anti-littering messages; and build some new teaching models that can be used with children.

The students have been committed to preserving the area’s watersheds. Abington students have made it their mission to speak to as many people as possible about the importance of properly disposing of litter — especially cigarette butts and plastics — and conserving water through personal usage and harvesting rain water for lawns and gardens.

Central Bucks High School West in Doylestown also won the award this year for its Life Skills Support Class, a special education program for students with intellectual disabilities that focuses on teaching domestic vocational and social skills in authentic environments. Its program encourages healthy eating habits while teaching realistic life skills to students.

Representatives from the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control were the judges for this year’s award. 

Since 2006, there have been 16 schools that have won the Environmental Community Service Award (ECSA), each receiving a $5,000 honorarium to further their environmental programs.