a recent graduate from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, conceptualized The Rainforest Challenge when she was 13, after meeting a Costa Rican exchange student who encouraged her to learn more about his country’s forests. Concerned about how youth under 18 were not directly involved in the rainforest preservation movement, she began to think of how she could engage them and how she could counteract the disempowering messages that youth were being fed about the failing state of their environment. By sixteen, Katherine was in the midst of marketing the project on a national scale while arranging presentation to groups across New England, all while dancing and being an active high school student! Katherine’s creative inspiration can be seen in various aspects of the presentations – most obviously, the interpretive dance.

The Rainforest Challenge project and Katherine’s leadership style is heavily influenced by her 16 years in the 4-H program. The Rainforest Challenge project was initially supported and partially financed by the 4-H Pine Tree Grant Foundation (additional funding cam from the Maine Community Grant Foundation) and the local 4-H County Extension agent was instrumental in providing resources and pointing Katherine in the right direction along the way.

Having spent five years motivating youth through the Rainforest Challenge program Katherine decided to take a more theoretical approach to the subject and focus her undergraduate studies on attitude change in an effort to discover what the secret was to persuading others.

While intensely involved in her BA degree, Katherine fully expected the program to wither, but once she put information about the program on line, response continued to pour in. The project has seemed to take on a life of its own.

Katherine is currently working as an intern for National 4-H Council as the Alumni Relations and Workplace Giving Coordinator as well as the web page designer for the Alumni Donor Relations department. She is currently focusing her energy on moving into the mass communications field while applying for graduate school.

Seeing the tropical rainforest has always been one of Katherine’s dreams and spending time there will allow her to re-energize and give The Rainforest Challenge the attention it deserves.

For more information about Katherine Watier...

a current student at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia was, at age 10, part of the conception of the Rainforest Challenge and his contribution to the program was in the area of marketability, as his talents are in the visual arts. By age 14 he had illustrated most of the programs curriculum and created the logo that was adopted by STEP (Students Toward Environmental Protection), the group that was currently running the Rainforest Challenge. Matthew, at the same time, was an active member in high school theater, both as an actor, set designer, consultant and general core member of the theater productions he was involved in.

Matthew continued to plan presentations with STEP, but also worked on his leadership skills in 4-H; planning and coordinating the teen conferences on the Mid-coast and State levels. Matthew was the "resident artist" for all the groups to which he belonged, designing brochures and other paraphernalia for publication on a local, state, and national audiences.

Matthew, after graduation from high school in 1997, went to college to focus upon illustration, especially creating children’s books. But in his need to market himself and the products that he was making; he took great interest in the many aspects of digital art. Now working on a prototype of an interactive digital demonstration, he has once again turned his eye back to the curriculum of the Rainforest Challenge. He has already finished a motivational movie for the program and is now designing an interactive CD-Rom of games to be published for the programmers to use within their presentations for schools.

The rainforest has always been a great muse for Matt’s creative consciousness and he is eager to walk in the rainforest. A more intimate knowledge of that environment is what he wants to have to truly market and produce products that will help in its preservation.

For more information about Matt Watier...