Caroline Lewis, director of education who oversees the Fairchild Challenge, the environmental outreach program of South Florida’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, announced on Feb. 26 the winners of the 7th Annual Fairchild Challenge Student Congress debates, in which 101 students from 22 South Florida public and private high schools debated today’s most pressing environmental topics. The six-and-a-half hour program took place Feb. 7, in Fairchild Garden’s auditorium.
 
Functioning as a literal “Congress,” the students were divided into a “House” and “Senate” that debated proposed bills. The debaters were judged by a panel composed of teachers, alumni and community leaders. Topics included a bill requiring all fast-food industries to use a minimum of 75 percent postconsumer recycled content materials for all food packaging by 2010; a bill to impose a mandatory “carbon emissions offset tax” on all commercial and private flights; and a bill to impose a “bag tax” on each consumer purchase that requires new paper and/or plastic bags to be distributed by retail stores in Miami-Dade County.
 
Students attending the congress voted in their own Students’ Choice Awards. In the Senate, they chose Nastassja Schmiedt of Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, and in the House, Eddie Thomas of Booker T. Washington.
 
“Every year at our Student Congress debates, we are gratified to see more passion and commitment to environmental issues in our students,” Lewis said. “The debates are a vital tool in our mission to give South Florida’s young people a voice in the national conversation about the critical issues affecting our planet – and to foster lifelong environmental stewardship in the students, in their families and in their communities.”
 
Participating schools were Archbishop Coleman F. Carroll High; Booker T. Washington Senior High; Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart; Christopher Columbus High School; Conservatory Preparatory Senior High; Coral Reef Senior High; Doral Academy Charter High; Gulliver Preparatory School; Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High; John A. Ferguson Senior High; MAST Academy; Mater Academy Charter High; Miami Country Day School; Miami Edison Senior High; Miami Killian Senior High; Miami Palmetto High School; Miami Senior High; Miami Southridge Senior High; Our Lady of Lourdes Academy; Ronald Reagan/Doral Senior High; Somerset Academy Charter High School-Silver Palms; South Plantation High School; and Young Men’s Preparatory Academy.
 
In its seventh year of existence, the Fairchild Challenge is quickly growing to become one of the world’s most comprehensive and influential youth environmental education programs. The National Forum on Children and Nature, (NFCN), a high-profile campaign of the prestigious Conservation Fund, recently recognized it as a worldwide model for connecting youths with the environment in new and creative ways.
  
The Fairchild Challenge, established in 2002 by South Florida’s 70-year-old Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, seeks to reconnect America’s youths with nature through an inter-disciplinary program available free to middle and high schools. Designed to integrate with state curriculum standards, the Fairchild Challenge offers a series of individual projects and contests in which schools may earn points toward prizes awarded at an annual ceremony each May.
 
Staff members at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, one of the world’s premier conservation and education-oriented gardens, also train educators from public gardens, museums, zoos and other organizations to establish Fairchild Challenge programs throughout the U.S. and beyond. To learn more,  call (305) 667-1651.