2006-2007 PRIDE Club Project: An Expedition into Your Environmental Past

The PRIDE initiative celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2007. The 2006-2007 PRIDE Club Project was designed to give students a central role in commemorating this milestone.

Students could be the lead investigators in the region-wide PRIDE Oral History Project. This ambitious project  collected stories about PRIDE from the citizens, local officials and students who had contributed to or benefited from the initiative. The goal was to portray the need for PRIDE when it began in 1997, the progress made since then and, finally, the work to be done in the future.

The PRIDE Club’s projects became part of our oral history. The students’ work was:

• Used as sources for a commemorative video and book about PRIDE
• Archived at the University of Kentucky as a permanent record of our region’s progress in reclaiming our environment.

Folklorist Dale Johnson guided the PRIDE Oral History Project. He visited the schools and helped students prepare to discuss the environmental past with members of your community.

PRIDE Expedition

The 2006-2007 PRIDE Club Project was a learning expedition into each county’s environmental past. Each PRIDE Club will worked as a team to discover the story of their community’s relationship with its environment, focusing on water and solid waste issues.

Along the way, students gained knowledge about local environmental issues and attitudes and how they have changed over time. Through discussions with family members, neighbors and local officials, they discovered what our environment used to look like and why we had to begin changing the way we think about stewardship. This was a chance to share with others what they have learned through PRIDE.

Filed under: PRIDE Club Winner