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The WIN Team

The Westerly Innovations Network

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The Westerly Innovations Network, or WIN team is a student community service team from Westerly, Rhode Island. Most of us are in the Westerly Public School System. The team was initialized on September 3rd, 2002 as a community problem solving team and entered Future Problem Solving (FPSP) / Community Problem Solving (CmPS) Competition. We won 2nd place for Project M.O.W.E.R. at the International Conference at the University of Connecticut in 2003. Project S.C.A.T. went to the CMPS competition again in 2004. In 2005, Project WIN-05 won the 1st place at the CMPS competition at the University of Kentucky, the 3rd place at the Volvo Adventure in Gothenburg, Sweden, and gold prize at the Christopher Columbus Awards in Orlando, Florida. Team members Alex and Jeff attended the 2005 Children's World Summit for the Environment in Aichi, Japan. Alex was the junior board member representing North America at the conference.

Our project for 2006 was entered into the E-Cybermission competition and the Christopher Columbus Awards. The Robo-Nurse was a gadget designed to help patients with complicated medication schedule (such as AIDS or HIV patients, or even seniors with multi-chronic diseases) to get higher adherence to their medications, as non-adherence could potentially be fatal. Another feature of our gizmo will be able to broadcast a distress signal and contact family members in case of emergency. We won two Criteria awards for the E-Cybermission and received $2,000 in US savings bonds per student.

Live Wire Media of San Francisco, CA made a documentary of the project in 2006 in The Character Chronicles educational DVD series. The documentary can be viewed in YouTube.

In 2007 we visited Mexico during April vacation to help set up a media center and give presentations to students at the Yaocalli school in Mexico City. We also established a Mexican WIN team to extend our impact to Central and South America.

We have won in the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Environmental Excellence Award. One of our teammate also won the 2007 Brower Youth Awards. Please click the BYA link to watch video of our documentary.

We have been working on our 2008 project “WIN 08’ SP2— A Green Bridge Across The Digital Divide”. We were working together with non-government organizations in Africa to help set up computer / media centers in needy countries in order to bring its students and schools into the modern age. Health education materials will be part of the settings.

So far we have established global WIN teams in Cameroon, Kenya, and Mexico.

We received the first place award in the 2008 CMPS International Competition in the Senior Division Environmental Category. We also received the prestigious Beyonder Award, which is awarded to one CMPS team each year for going above and beyond in their efforts.

Team members, Alex and Cassandra, attended the 2008 TUNZA International Children’s Conference for the Environment in Stavanger, Norway and made a presentation about our E-Waste project.

We shipped a computer center to La Manzanilla, Mexico to be used by students in early 2008. We have worked to establish a 10-computer media center at The Compass School in Kingston, RI, as well as a media center for the Mama na Dada Centre in Kenya in December 2008. In addition, we built another computer center for Vallermoso Provincial High School in the Philippines in February, 2010.

In May, 2010, our teammate Alex Lin was invited to make a presentation about WIN’s e-waste project at the Global E-waste Conference hosted by INTERPOL, the UK Environment Agency and US and Swedish Environmental Protection Agencies in Alexandra, Virginia. There were government officials, NGOs and reporters from 22 countries who attended. Here is the comment made by Lisa Jackson, the administrator of EPA.

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The Junior WIN Team Project TGIF—Turning Grease into Fuel is now making a difference. They won the Rhode Island School Recycling Club Innovations Award in April, 2009. The team also travelled to Michigan State University in May, 2009 to compete in the CmPS (Community Problem Solving Program) International Conference, and also won the MTV Switch Award by the Ashoka’s Youth Venture organization. MTV made a documentary of Project T.G.I.F which was the only project in the U.S. selected. The MTV Switch Campaign features projects from 5 countries, and started airing in South America in November, 2009. It will air in Europe and the United States in 2010.

Our teammate Cassandra participated at the 2009 United Nations TUNZA Children and Youth Conference at Daejeon in South Korea. Cassandra also made a presentation about project T.G.I.F. Our project video is now on the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) website.

T.G.I.F. won the 2009-2010 President’s Environmental Youth Awards. The team was invited to go to Washington D.C. in May, 2010 to receive the award. The President’s Environmental Youth Awards (PEYA) promotes awareness of our nation’s natural resources and encourages positive community involvement. Since 1971, the President of the United States has joined with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to recognize young Americans for protecting our nation’s air, water, land, and ecology. Each year, the PEYA program honors a wide variety of environmental projects developed by young individuals and youth organizations to promote environmental awareness. Please see the website for more information: http://www.epa.gov/enviroed/peya/index.html

In addition, the junior team won the 2010 SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Environmental Excellence Awards. http://www.seaworld.org/conservation-matters/eea/ The awards event took place from April 21-23, 2010 at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida. Jack Hanna was at the awards ceremony and presented us with the trophy and a $10,000 check. Jack also told us his African stories during a night safari.

According to EEA staff, the competition was very competitive. After the preliminary judging phase, the top 12 projects moved on to the EEA Final Judging Event at the National Wildlife Federation in Reston, VA. All projects were reviewed by some of the best environmental minds in the country. After two days of careful evaluation and intense debate, project TGIF was selected as one of only eight National Finalists.

Project TGIF was among one of the grand prize winners for the Best Buy / Youth Venture @15 Community Impact Challenge . The winner was decided by online voting between 3/15—4/2 /2010.

In June 2010, the Junior WIN team traveled to Orlando, Florida to participate in National Championship Week. The team was selected as one of 8 finalists from across the nation to compete in the Christopher Colombus Awards, a program that combines science and technology to create innovative ideas in communities. http://www.christophercolumbusawards.com/

Please check out the Project T.G.I.F. page to find out more!