Every year, millions of students throughout the country and around the globe unthinkingly discard their extra notebook paper, especially as the school year ends. In September 2023, Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy (BCHA) started its collaboration with Green Good Guardians, a nonprofit organization founded by Persis Garg, a high school student from New Jersey, to find a new home for the unused notebook pages.
This past academic year, Maxim “Max” Ferits, a senior, Liam Raz, a junior, and Kira Doft, a sophomore at BCHA, began a Stamford chapter in collaboration with Saachi Goyal, a senior at the Academy for Information Technology and Engineering (AITE). BCHA’s collaboration with AITE led to a larger pool of notebook collections while creating a more comprehensive and impactful effort to promote environmental and educational initiatives within the community. According to Ferits, “Joining forces with AITE to save the environment, It’s like assembling the Avengers, but with more notebooks and fewer capes!”
When students at both schools met, they realized how similar the Jewish and Indian approaches to community service are. Jewish students are imbued with the value of improving the world (tikkun olam) and getting involved in service projects that impact their surroundings. Goyal taught the BCHA students about the emphasis in Indian culture on world improvement (vishva sudhaar). According to Goyal, “With this work, we found a common purpose that united members of various communities from Indian to Jewish, Connecticut to New Jersey, and expanded the Green Good Guardian mission. As the saying goes, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’”
The Green Guardian mission aligns seamlessly with several core Jewish values upheld by the students. By demonstrating chesed, they extend compassion to their community and the planet. The value of teaching one’s children (chinuch) is reflected in their efforts to educate themselves and inspire their peers about environmental stewardship and community care. Additionally, their commitment to avoiding waste (bal tashchit) underscores the Jewish environmental ethic of conserving resources and preventing unnecessary waste. Through their involvement, these students are not only contributing positively to their community and environment but also embodying the ethical teachings of their faith, illustrating how academic learning at BCHA is deeply intertwined with students’ moral and ethical development.
At the end of last school year, the student leaders put out collection boxes throughout the BCHA building. Every morning during after-tefillah Upper School announcements, Doft made a point to inform her fellow students about the program.
This year BCHA still has the collection boxes open, and the school encourages students, as well as parents and community members, to bring old notebooks in to be recycled.
Raz and Doft thanked BCHA Upper School Principal David Giver, expanding on Max’s analogy, “He is the superhero behind the scenes. His unwavering support and guidance for our Green Good Guardians initiative at BCHA was phenomenal. He helped us navigate challenges, offered invaluable advice and even rolled up his sleeves to help collect the notebooks. We couldn’t have done it without his dedication and belief in our mission.”
