Restoring the Environment and Developing Youth Nabil Morad , nmorad@terpmail.umd.edu

1. Restoring the Environment and Developing YouthNabil Morad, nmorad@terpmail.umd.edu Environment, Technology, and EconomyPsychology What is the Ready Program? Why is it important? Restoring the Environment and Developing Youth – READY for short – is a program run by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, supported by PATH (People Acting Together in Howard County) and funded by the Howard County government in order to lessen the county’s lasting impact on the environment. I was one of many crew members sent to different public location, such as schools and churches across Howard County to build rain gardens that are designed to process the pollutants and extra nutrients that rainfall would otherwise pick up from roads, parking lots and lawns and carry to our precious bay. Contact Info: Donald Tsusaki, dtsusaki@allianceforthebay.org, (443) 949- 0575 The READY program sought to address the issue of rainwater runoff throughout its entirety. This was accomplished through the construction of rain gardens, and through the education of its workers at seminars and lectures at various sites .As more impermeable surfaces are created every day, water cannot properly percolate causing sources such as animal feces and lawn fertilizer to be washed away directly into the bay , creating optimal conditions for algae to flourish well beyond their normal levels. As the algae takes over the bay, it restricts access to sunlight by other plants in the bay, causing the smaller aquatic life to have no food to eat. These consequences echo upwards throughout the system creating “dead zones” where the majority of life cannot survive. The READY program seeks to reverse these effects by educating the general population of this lesser known topic and by creating landscapes that filter out the extra nutrients before they reach the bay, instead creating healthy self-sustaining gardens in public places such as schools and churches. Finished garden at Francisan Friars. Morad, Nabil (Photographer). (2013) READY Program Finished Gardens[Documentation] Daily Work On the practicum site, which consisted of various local schools, churches and retirement homes, much of my duties required immense physical strain. On a typical day, between a group of 6 crew members, two thousand pounds of rocks and dirt were moved by hand. After a considerably long and detailed process where layers of earth are systematically removed, the gardens are tested by seeing whether or not water correctly percolates down into the ground. The other portion of the practicum required occasional educational lectures and seminars so that the organization as a whole could better learn the impacts of our work from trained specialists. These ranged from aquatic research labs, wildlife preserves and national parks among many others. As a whole, this practicum was both mentally and physically challenging as everyone was expected to be able to complete the work, as well as know why they were doing it. Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay [Logo] (1971). Retrieved March 31st, 2013, from:http://www.stormwaterpa.org/media/blogcontent/AlliancefortheChesapeakeBay.JPG Impact Crew members construct a rain garden at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center in Columbia, Maryland. Tsusaki,Donald (Photographer). (2013). READY Crew Members. [Documentation] Across 5 crews and 30 young adults, 192,000 square feet of impermeable surfaces were treated. Although there are many more areas to be taken care of, this is still a vital step that will prevent a considerable amount of extra nutrients from reaching the bay and creating more dead zones in the eco system. This has many social implications as well. The success of putting 30 young adults in charge of changing our bay’s future was understandably met with a lot of doubt. However, the involved crews managed to put in more work than ever expected in one of Maryland’s hottest summers on record. This not only got the program reapproved for the upcoming summer, but inspired many other groups within the community to take part. Mass orders for rain gardens have been accumulated by the supervisors of the READY program in preparation for the next season, DC has shown interest in replicating the program in Washington and the county has begun planning seminars to teach local landscapers the value of rain gardens. Future Goals My involvement in the READY program has not greatly changed my future goals in the long term, but because of it I am heavily planning on returning to the program this summer as a crew leader. Despite what I had predicted, being on a landscaping site all day doing very intense physical labor was much more rewarding than the majority of the other jobs that I have had, and nothing can replace the feeling of coming home entirely exhausted and broken every day knowing that one helped the environment, and overall, society. Although it is not enough to divert me from my current path in psychology, it has definitely developed a sincere appreciation for hard work. Acknowledgements For this experience I’d like to thank Donald Tsusaki, whom without this entire program would have never come to fruition, JaisonRenkenberger for driving 30 miles a day to supervise every individual site, and Amanda Tritinger for supervising our immediate site.