The fate of our civilization rests in our ability to believe the items we hold within our hands, properly cared for and distributed to those who come after us, after we have used them; will define ourselves as a people with a love for this world we are so lucky to have set foot upon, and made a difference that we took part of at all.
Green Education Foundation is a 501C3 public charity organization focused on supporting and promoting green education in our schools. By placing Donation & Recycling drop off stations at various sites within our communities, we are able to divert landfill waste, as well, collect used but still usable items for sale. The proceeds generated are used to support the schools directly as well as support our green ecology / conservation programs for the schools.
GEF is part of The Green Group, which was formed to support a closed loop cycle for textile recycling. Collecting and selling used clothes, shoes and household items is not a new initiative. Although it began as a charitable endeavor as far back as 1902, it has evolved into a mix of nonprofits and for-profit recyclers who work in the world of donated and or recycled goods. Whether for-profit or non-profit, those goods are always sold via retail outlets throughout the world. In the case of non-profits such as GEF, Goodwill Industries and/or Salvation Army. The proceeds from the sale of the goods are used for the stated mission of the non-profit.
The Green Group ensures everything collected ends up either reused or recycled into new products. GEF goes further than most to ensure the products collected through its NDRS program (Neighborhood Donation / Recycling Station) are processed in the most efficient and environmentally responsible way. GEF collects the donated / recycled items via Mega Paca processes and sells the reusable items through its retail outlets, and nova fiber recycles the unusable items by converting them into fiber that will be remade into a variety of products. This alliance guarantees that all items collected by GEF are responsibly recycled.
Meet The Founder | Green Education Foundation
Charlene Nijmeh
Charlene Nijmeh has worked hard to build Green Education Foundation into a successful nonprofit green enterprise that not only benefits the environment; delivers affordable clothing to the world, and also helps support the creation of micro enterprises in developing countries that gives the most impoverished people a sustainable source of income, helping to pull them out of poverty.
As of Jan 2020, Green Education Foundation will divert over 50 million pounds of unwanted but recyclable textiles out of our nations landfills every year.
The cause she most champions is the environment. Raised in a Native American household (daughter of the Chairwoman of her tribe ) she was raised to believe in the responsibility bestowed on the people of this Planet to protect mother Earth. Her love for the environment guided her to produce an educational green DVD teaching students the importance of living a green lifestyle.
The G.E.F. Company Mission
GEF’s mission is to provide education on Ecology and Conservation. Today’s youth are confused about what should be done. They are getting mixed messages from their parents, peers, educators, political and business leaders. When our president tells us that shopping is good for our country, it sends a contradictory message since children are told that reducing unnecessary consumption is good for the planet. Children find it hard to reconcile contradictory positions and oftentimes choose to withdraw from any real position of their own. They also tend to be influenced by the loudest voice – The Media.
Corporations spend billions of dollars buying our children’s attention in order to convince them to become better consumers and although there are many fine examples of corporate “green responsibility”, we can not depend on them nor should we expect them to promote reduced consumerism. It is irrational thinking to expect any company to promote against its best interest. The task of educating our children regarding environmental responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders.
Although the “idea” of our mission is simple, our tasks are far from simple. We are faced with serious budget cuts in education that make it difficult to ask our schools to add more to their curriculum. Green Education is simply not a priority in most schools, of course many schools do an admirable job and work hard to expose their students to some elements of Green Education. These schools need help; and without specific programs that engage the students and expose them to the real threat that complacency brings, we will have lost the battle and our window of time for our future generations.
Educating our youth about environmental sustainability (careful planning of our planet’s limited natural resources), global warming, carbon emissions, economics and balancing our needs with the needs of future generations; all require a fundamental understanding of the problems we face.
Engaging students in their own communities and their own local environments helps define these issues more clearly. Our goal is to raise money in order to fund the creation of “Green Programs” tailored to student’s ages.
Coupled with workshops and hands-on “Green Projects” that engage and challenge the minds of our students to think about solutions, we hope to be able to make a lasting impact on their choices.
The Goals of Green Education Foundation is to simplify these complex issues for our children, not confuse them with the debates and the positions of any one side. The only issue we concern ourselves with is the issue of “Awareness”.
The Green Group | Teacher Shelby Kocee Speaks About the Gen-7 School Curriculum
Research tells us that our most impressionable years are between the ages of 7-16. These are the years we develop our perspective on the world and how it makes sense in our lives. If we can engage our youth with the “environmental question”. If we can instill the belief in our children that a problem does in fact exist, their young minds will “grow, think, and create” solutions that we currently cannot fathom or anticipate.
Seed Minds ‣ Save the Future
This is what we refer to as “planting the seeds of awareness regarding the environmental question”. The simplest way to effect political change on the environmental issue is to raise a generation of children who believe, or at the very least understand, that a serious problem does in fact exist and needs to be addressed now rather than later. As far as we know given today’s technology, our window of time to take corrective action is almost gone.
More importantly, we must look beyond our current generation and attempt to envision how our “planting the seeds of awareness” on today’s generation will affect the minds and convictions of future generations. You see seeds grow to become strong trees that seed their own generation of trees.
Although our environmental problems may seem insurmountable in today’s light, we believe the solution lies not in today’s technology, but in tomorrows. This “solution” can only be found if someone is actively looking. Our mission is to help our children know enough and care enough to be looking.
There are so many worthwhile causes it’s difficult to decide which cause to support. We obviously can’t support them all. Although there are many wonderful environmental causes that are leading the way towards a more sustainable and green future, we need more leaders who can champion the green cause.