Talking with SSP Coordinator Jen Cirillo About
Helping Kids Work Toward a Sustainable Community

with Susan Bonthron, Vermont Community Works–SSP's documentation partner

What’s the most meaningful thing about this work for you?
“Kids realizing that they could impact their community at such a young age. This didn’t happen to me until I was older. Because they feel like they can do it, I feel like the sky’s the limit for what they’re willing to try.”

What about the risk that they’ll try and fail?
“As an adult I’ve had that disappointment—not seeing any change over the course of two years, knowing this work is slow, it doesn’t happen overnight. So in some ways it’s a careful balance of protecting the kids without stifling their creativity and enthusiasm, because it’s their enthusiasm that makes some things possible. “We can do it!” They don’t even know why an adult would think it’s not possible.

Have they been able to see changes?
“Some of them, yes. They identified the problem of graffiti, and it has been cleaned up (though we don’t know for sure that the events were related). A bunch of kids are going to be invited to come to a big event to help do graffiti cleanup as a Greenup activity.

“They’re also seeing what the process is for making the change. You have to talk to the people in your community, make sure everyone wants it to happen, and you have to learn who can help you. We are trying to help them figure out how to plan how to do a project. It’s not enough to write a letter. You have to think about what resources you need, who can help you do it, what the stumbling blocks are or the barriers to success, and how you will get around them. So it helps them understand how difficult a project may be, or why it might not be successful right away. They’ve already planned for the stumbling blocks. This is an important life skill, planning in a collaborative team.

“A group of kids who were in teams of eight wanted to do two different projects. They are being graded on teamwork, with a teamwork rubric. They can’t be graded on the outcome, since so many factors are out of their control. But they can be graded on their teamwork: Did they attend community meetings? Did they identify who to talk to? and so on.”

What if the project starts and the kids move on?
“It’s nice that this is a 4/5 team, so the 4th graders can continue the work and are up to speed. And they have a two-year cycle in their curriculum as well. But they might do the work in other situations if they want to continue the work (say, in after school programs). And they have the skills of writing, teamwork, etc., which they are required to demonstrate in other projects. These 5th graders will move on to the middle school next year, just up the road, but still in their neighborhoods. We won’t know what happens to them. Maybe it will be possible to ask the Edmunds 6th graders who come from Champlain to do a follow up....”