Earth Day, which was celebrated on April 22 this year, is an annual event for people around the world to celebrate the earth and renew commitments to building a safer, healthier, and cleaner world for everyone.

The freshmen in Mrs. Flowers’ Business classes at the Clinton County Area Technology Center celebrated Earth Day 2011 by picking up trash, planting flowers, enjoying snacks from the local “Garden Spot”, and visiting the Earth Day Network website where they pledged their “Act of Green”. Tyler Shelton, a freshman in Mrs. Flowers’ class, won the drawing for the Yoshino Cherry Tree.

The students contributed over 130 individual pledges to the “Billion Acts of Green” campaign 2011. Billion Acts of Green is the largest environmental service and advocacy campaign in the world that is striving to prove the idea that real change occurs best when millions of people commit to take action. The students registered various pledges, from tree plantings, turning water off while brushing teeth, to recycling their plastic. Every act registered will be counted toward the campaigns’ ultimate goal of amassing one billion actions. More information about the “Billion Acts of Green” can be found by visiting www.earthday.org.

This year’s Earth Day celebration activities hopefully will encourage the students to be good stewards of the natural resources around them. After picking up trash, one student made the statement, “I need to stop littering and encourage others to stop too because it makes things so ugly. While picking up trash today, I realized how nasty it was and I am not going to litter anymore.”

One group of the Clinton County ATC freshman students who helped celebrate Earth Day last week are shown in the photo above. Front row, left to right: Whitney Stearns, Nikita Avery. Back row, left to right: Nicole Ferguson, Angela Irving, Mrs. Stesha Flowers, Stephanie Norris, Simone Collins, Mary Grider

Tyler Shelton is shown above with the Yoshino Cherry Tree he won in the Clinton County ATC Earth Day giveaway.

Sydney Hunter, Sarah Glover and Patricia Brown also participated in the ATC Earth Day celebration effort.