Balance Rock Center Global Warming Initiative

Hi...my name is Nate Richards. I was in my mom's car on a trip to my friend's house and I got this idea of what I wanted to be for Halloween. I was thinking that I've been what kids normally are for 11 years and I wanted to be a little different this year...and more different than the 2 times when I was a chicken and a clown. Earlier in the week I had taken one of our Environmental Science classes and I realized I wanted to be something that would represent a cause so I decided I wanted to be a global warming protester. I told my mom and she said, "I think that's a great idea, let's get a group of kids to do that"! When I thought about it a little more I said we should make a group at Balance Rock. My brother Noel asked what the name should be. After thinking about it for a while I came up with the name STOPP which stands for Save Trees, Oceans, People and Penguins. The next week we talked about it at Balance Rock and that's how the organization started.

Who's in it?

• Students at the Balance Rock Democratic Free School and Homeschool Support Center as well as the teachers, staff and parents who are supporting them.



What are we doing?

• This Halloween we decided instead of the usual costumes we would trick or treat as global warming protesters. We got a lot of coverage from the local newspapers for doing this.
• Right now our biggest concern is to convince the owners of the film, "An Inconvenient Truth" (which is a GREAT film about global warming) to release it from copyright restrictions so it can be duplicated and given out freely and legally worldwide in order to build up support more quickly for change to stop global warming.
• Currently wešre in the process of getting support from the Mayor of Worcester and the governor-elect of Massachusetts as well as a number of national and local environmental and religious organizations.



Whošs supporting us?

• On a field trip with students and staff to the local shopping mall everyone we talked to who had heard of or seen "An Inconvenient Truth" smiled and said they think wešre doing the right thing and wished us luck. As soon as we get official endorsements wešll update this page and list them here.