The Rainforest Challenge Origins

There exists a world as lush and exotic as any that has flourished on earth- where tree frogs sing, where fish walk on land and flowers bloom as big as fruit trees...

They cover scarcely 7% of the earth's surface, yet tropical rainforests are home to half of all the living things on this planet. But that home is now being destroyed faster than any natural community on this earth...If there is no change, by the end of this century, the new area of Rainforest destroyed will be as big as one third of the continental United States and destroyed with it, up to 20% of all life on earth."-Dan Rather, CBS News

The beginnings of the project....

These words are startling and heart-wrenching. Many people ask, "What can we do?" The students at Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro, Maine, believed that something can and must be done.

The Rainforest Challenge is a rainforest educational preservation project. STEP gives presentations about the rainforest to schools and community groups and challenges them to get involved in saving the forest in one of two ways.

• To one: buy an acre of rainforest through The Children's Rainforest in Costa Rica or The Rainforest Preservation Foundation in Brazil.
• Or two: take up the challenge of giving rainforest presentations in their area.

Through bottle drives, bakes sales, and collection jars, the students at MVHS were able to buy and therefore preserve one acre of rainforest through the Children's Rainforest in Costa Rica. In one month, STEP was able to educate students and faculty and raise the money.

STEP then began to give presentations on environmental subjects to schools and community groups nationally to educate them about the deterioration of the environment. STEP then challenged them to buy one acre of rainforest through either the Children's Rainforest in Costa Rica or the Rainforest Preservation Foundation in Brazil. STEP also challenged them to accept the challenge of giving presentations on their own. They were able to do this by utilizing The Rainforest Challenge Curriculum.

The project has been received with growing enthusiasm. STEP gave over 13 presentations and saved over a dozen acres in its first year of existence. The message became global in 1993 when STEP presented the message to youth and adults at the First International Youth Environmental Summit in Loveland, Colorado. Since then, the project received national attention with groups from across the US are giving Rainforest Challenge presentations in their local communities.

One dollar preserves an area the size of a classroom. In an area that size, there are more species than in all of New England. If every student donated a dollar toward this cause, we, the youth of the world, could help save the tropical rainforest.

Those who invited us into their classrooms encouraged us to continue to sustain this project. To view their feedback about the program, click here.....

To read recent press about the program....

"Tropical rainforest are the Earth's oldest continuous ecosystems. Fossil records show that the forests of Southeast Asia have existed in more or less their present form for 70 to 100 million years."(Myers.Norman.The Primary Source) For more cool facts about the rainforest, click here.