Celebrating Earth Day All Month at KCC

By Jimmy Trujillo

Contributed photo

April is Earth Month at Kaua‘i Community College. As such, KCC will be celebrating Earth Day all month long with speakers, student presentations, cultural workshops, panel discussions and a community-based Earth Day celebration April 22.

The public is invited to attend these on- and off-campus events during April as the college celebrates the ʻāina and the culture it sustains. The campus will host Earth Week 2019 activities from April 22 to 27, from Monday’s hoʻolaulea to Saturday’s community workday with Malama Huleʻia. A calendar of  Earth Month events is posted on the KCC website and will feature a month-long Thursday afternoon series of panel discussions, a Hawaiian hale workshop, a presentation by Ulalia Woodside, Executive Director of the Nature Conservancy, and a campus celebration on April 22 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Earth Day, first celebrated on April 22, 1970, is an international day of action and is often acknowledged as one of the catalysts for the modern environmental movement in the United States. Proposed in 1969 as a way to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, it was then celebrated the following year across hundreds of college campuses as an environmental lesson. Peace activist John McConnel and Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson are often mentioned as inspired leaders of the growing movement for increased government regulations to protect the environment. Since then, Earth Day has gone global, and is now celebrated in more than 190 countries by more than a billion people as a day of civic engagement and political action.

For more information about KCC’s 2019 Earth Month Celebration, visit www.kauai.hawaii.edu or contact Faculty Sustainability Coordinator Jimmy Trujillo at jtrujill@hawaii.edu or Earth Month Planning Committee Chair Pua Rossi Fukino at puali@hawaii.edu.