Willie Smits II - How kids helped him save the rain forest

A couple of days ago my dad told me Willie's miracle saving the rain forest began with kids helping him. This is exactly the kind of story I want you guys to be inspired by. Real kid power! I e-mailed Willie and asked him if he would tell me what the kids did and how they did it. His answer follows. Thank you Willie for what you do and for telling us about real stuff kids can do that matters to the environment.

"To answer your question, indeed, all that I do now came about not because of some government program, not because there was some big nature conservation organization giving a lot of money, but only because schools in Balikpapan, an oil city on the East coast of Borneo, decided that they simply would begin and go for it.

They were children your age that were willing to do spelling contests, drawings, bake cookies, sold some of their old stuff, etc to raise that first 5.000 Dollar in one week time! Then a local company doubled the money and I could start building the first facilities. But the children continued, they set aside every month parts of their pocket money, they came out to bring food to the orangutans, they made pictures and produced their first Hyperstacks, an old fashioned but at that time revolutionary method of organizing and linking pages in the form of what we now know as HTML, on the very small screen MacIntosh computers. At those days I was the first person to have a Commodore 64 computer and the army would come to check on whether I was not doing dangerous things with this computer. Moreover so when I was the first person in Borneo to have a telex machine with which you could make a perforated strip of paper that you then had to run through a special tool to send individual letters through the telephone line to the other side of the world! Now in the modern age.... But those children made these very first CD's with their rain forest project on it and sent it by mail off to other schools around the world, to Korea, Japan, Chili, the USA. And they would every morning, when I would bring my three sons to school before leaving for the jungle, come running and tell me when more support had come from some part of the world as a reply to the CD and request for help they had sent. And they would smile!!!

It were those schoolchildren, your age, that used the most modern technologies at that time, that just did it. What they started has now become the worlds' largest primate conservation effort. What are our politicians waiting for? Don't we have enough evidence to know that we are destroying the world for your generation? If the founders fathers of America had had such short term vision, what would have become of your country? We just need to begin moving. When you stand still the target will always be far away, but when you begin at least you get closer and can see better what needs to be done next."

SEE THE NEW INTERACTIVE SOLAR SITE FOR KIDS

There’s a great new website for kids (I bet it’s good for many grown-ups too). The link is below.

The “Parents Corner” on the site says “The goal of the site is to provide your children with a playful and fun way to learn about renewable energy and solar power in particular. At the same time we would like to show them how they themselves can contribute towards saving energy and protecting the environment.”

I thought the book chapter downloads were really good. They’re each about 10 pages long. I especially liked the ones called “Solar Power” and “At Home” – both loaded with facts and insights which are interesting and very educational and will impress your friends! And you can also download some cool wallpaper for your computer and send ecards from the site.

Check it out: http://www.solar-is-future.com/kids/

GOOD CLEANTECH INTENTIONS - UNFORESEEN RESULTS WHICH CAN HURT KIDS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

In the developing world, pumping water from where it is to where it's
needed is important. For drinking, for washing, for irrigating crops,
for watering livestock. Diesel-powered pumps, which use fuel and pollute
the air and make a lot of noise and break down and need to be fixed, do
much of the pumping. So it seems like a good idea to use human-powered
treadle pumps (like a Stairmaster) to replace them.

A "do good things" firm in England pays families in India to replace
diesel with human power. But there are problems. The diesel pumps get
sold and used someplace else. And kids may be forced to do a lot more
than their fair share - like as slave labor for so many hours it hurts
their health. But human power might be a good idea for lots of things in
poor countries. Like cranking cheap computers to power them

So I think government and organizations should find ways to hear kids'
voices about cleantech stuff that will affect them. Not only to protect
kids, but to hear our ideas. Maybe in schools? Maybe in blogs?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/article2512731.ece#region-body-and-footer

TED "Willie Smits" Post

I'm Dylan, the Cleantech Kid. I'm in fifth grade. This blog is about cleantech and environmental topics which I hope other kids will look at and enjoy.

This posting will be about a talk from TED (www.ted.com), a conference and a community my mom and dad taught me about. It's called "Willie Smits restores a rainforest."

This is a great video. Willie Smits is amazing! He restores a huge rain forest by changing the whole climate. He was like his own weather machine, as in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs."

He began because he was worried about Orangutans being sick and not having a place to live where he lives in Borneo in Indonesia. There used to be a rain forest there with plenty of food and water and places where they could live. But mining and "slash and burn" agriculture wrecked it and drove away and killed the wildlife.

Willie Smits figured out a recipe to bring back the forest and make everything work again.

He got control of ownership of the land. He ended the fires, including the coal fires underground. He planted 1,000 trees a day, trees of all different kinds, and lots of other things. All of this created conditions which could feed people and Orangutans, and provide bioenergy. He got the local people very involved. As he got the forest working right and balanced, the temperature got lowered, the humidity raised, and the cloud cover increased. The birds and reptiles and wildlife came back.

I was very excited by his dream and determination, and what one man could do to push all this and make it happen.

Future postings will include interviews with cool people, stories about green things I read about and places I visit, awesome videos and info from other blogs, and guest bloggers. There will be postings every 2 weeks and sometimes more often.

Here is the talk:

P. S. Make yourself a follower of the Cleantech Kid!

Cleantech Kids- First Post

Welcome to Cleantech Kids!

Our plan is to publish our posts fortnightly. The posts will be about environmental and cleantech issues of special interest and relevance to kids.