News from Parterner school in Turkey

From: Seçil NAZLIER [mailto:snazlier@odtugvo.k12.tr]
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 4:59 AM
To: Clay, Carmen
Subject: Challenge20/20

Hi Mrs. Clay;
It's been so long since we had our last contact. Salman has sent a SKYPE conferencing request on December 16th, but I was away from school because of health problems so our team was unable to organize their student club activities when I wasn't at school. Now we are having our winter break and we will be back at school on next Monday but I will be working for only two weeks and then take my maternity leave. I think I will be away from school till summer holiday so another teacher will be in charge of our team. His name is Sertac ERDEN (serden@odtugvo.k12.tr) but still I will be managing our club activities via email. Therefore, your primary contact will be Mr. Erden but you can always contact me whenever you need.
While I was away from school, our team members carry on their research on carbon footprint and they were brainstorming about finding ways to reduce our schools carbon dioxide emission. I have contacted some professional companies that provide counseling for schools and other facilities for carbon management, but our school won’t be able to support this kind of professional help financially. So I tried to find alternative ways that doesn’t need too much money. I wanted some help from Middle East Technical University Department of Environmental Engineering and arranged a meeting for the next term, with a professor who deals with projects about reducing carbon emission. Also I’m still trying to contact some people from United Nations who run developmental projects in our country. We are planning to organize a conference in our school to raise awareness about reducing carbon emission in our daily life, which will be held in next term by the contribution of expert speakers.
So, these are the news from METU High School. How things are going around there?
Maybe we can arrange a SKYPE meeting for the following two weeks.
Best regards….


Dear Mrs. Nazlier and Mr. Erden;

It is a pleasure to hear from you. Congratulations on your future baby!!!

Welcome to our team Mr. Erden. Please see what Salman and his emerging Challenge 20/20 Green Team YES(Youth Energy Service) did on MLK Day at http://casadynaischallenge2020.blogspot.com/ .

I have asked Salman to send you his personal reflection and what his plans are for the future. (He will be attending and maybe presenting this project briefly, as his path to peace, at the National Service-Learning Conference in Atlanta http://nslc.nylc.org/, where I am part of a presentation called, Actualizing the Six Billion Paths to Peace daily, in collaboration with two other schools, Blake School of Minneapolis and White Plains School of New York sponsored by the Shinnyo-en Foundation http://www.sef.org/.)

The teacher facilitating the Green Team YES at Casady is Mr. Mark Delgrosso, Biology teacher. We also have an emerging team at the Middle Division under the leadership of the daughter of our Chemistry teacher and Environmental Club sponsor, Julieta Zesiger. I have also asked Mrs. Zesiger to ask Cathy to send you all a reflection of what she has done so far and what her plans for the future are.

The Green School Committee members who are helping the Casady beginnings of a Green Team are Les Pace and Christina Stallings. Both of them have online resources to share with your team. The progress we have made has been more in connecting to people and resources to help Salman develop a course of action for the Spring term.

I am sending a copy of this e-mail to the mentioned people as an introduction of Salman’s NAIS partner school in Turkey. How about SKYPING next week? We just returned to school. We were out yesterday due to inclement weather.

Best regards,