Project Learning Tree Awards EIH at UHCL Grant for Service Learning Project

February 27, 2006

Washington, D.C.—Project Learning Tree® (PLT), the environmental education program of the American Forest Foundation, has awarded 33 community grants for its GreenWorks! service learning projects across the country, including one to the Environmental Institute of Houston at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. For the past 13 years, Project Learning Tree has complemented its service learning initiative, GreenWorks!, with this substantial grant award program. The grants are awarded in the preceding year, 2005, and are set for completion during 2006.

GreenWorks! projects partner PLT educators, students, and communities with responsible environmental action to make a lasting impact. Both service learning and community service projects provide opportunities for students to recognize and address important environmental community issues. Such opportunities help students expand their academic and personal growth while developing an understanding of civic responsibility. The projects help make a difference in how students think, in changing their sense of responsibility toward their communities, and in strengthening their understanding of their relationship with the environment.

Since 1992, Project Learning Tree has distributed approximately $310,000 to 654 grant projects in communities across the country.

For the EIH grant, elementary, high school, and university preservice teachers will combine their talents and labor to design and construct a "School Habitat Demonstration Lab" on the University of Houston-Clear Lake campus. The lab area will be used for workshops that will target teachers, community leaders, government officials and others that are interested in constructing wetlands and using native plants. The area will also host environmental education workshops for pre-service teachers and classroom educators.

For more information about GreenWorks! and Project Learning Tree visit www.plt.org.