GSI Executive Director Deborah Moore's Greening Work Featured in Womenetics
Green Schools Initiative Executive Director Deborah Moore was recently featured in an article by Corinne Garcia entitled, "Helping Our Schools Go Green," in Womenetics, a website that "connects and inspires women in their personal and professional lives":
When Deborah Moore of Berkeley, Calif., volunteered at her kindergartner’s school pizza party in 2000, she was shocked to find that the school didn't recycle. Her career with the Environmental Defense Fund probably made her more sensitive, but at the same time, recycling was pretty mainstream by then.
“I thought, ‘What else are they not doing?’” she says. “As a professional environmental scientist it felt hypocritical to look the other way.” So she started volunteering. Together with fourth grade students, she calculated that this one pizza party per month generated 1,000 pounds of garbage per year. It wasn’t long until the students rallied for recycling.
It also wasn’t long until Moore made this her full-time job, cofounding Green Schools Initiative (GSI) in 2004, where she serves as executive director. Her organization provides training and support, offering tools for people to transform their own school community.
“It wasn’t just my daughter’s school, all schools were in the environmental dark ages,” she says. And there was more to it than just helping the environment.