SPLASH 2010

During the summers of 2006 2007 and 2010 Ijo Arts Media Group partnered with Gear Up and Asa Mercer Middle School for the Splash! Environmental Summer Camp project.

The camps are service and expeditionary learning summer programs for Asa Mercer Middle School Students that focus on local environmental issues. The students learn about King County’s water system through hands-on science experimentation and inquiry and visits to key sites in our local water system such as regional watersheds and water and sewage processing plants.

The youth worked in teams during the course of the program. Each team produces a media project based on an aspects of what they learned.

In the summer of 2010 the Splash! project was able to form a partnership with Seattle Public Utilities Environmental Justice Network in Action (SPU EJNA) department through a Seattle Public Utilities Grant made possible by the support of the Local Hazardous Waste Management Program. The grant was designed to help community organizations conduct outreach to ‘historically underserved communities’ (immigrants, people of color, youth) about issues related to water, waste disposal and resource conservation.

The grant provided media production equipment for the Splash! project and covered the administrative fees associated with organizing and conducting youth-led community outreach media projects and activities. The clean water and conserve water posters, and the Saving Water video PSA are projects the students created as a result of this partnership. Over the course of the fall semester students conducted six outreach presentations at various community events using their media projects as teaching tools.