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Seven students from Columbus Public School’s McGuffey Welcome Center are helping the environment and improving their English skills in the process. The Student Ambassadors are working with Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District to translate brochures about storm water pollution into their native languages. The students, each from a different country, have translated the information into Spanish, Somali and French. McGuffey Welcome Center is one of two Columbus Public Schools’ programs for high school students new to Columbus and the United States. The students and their native countries are Barqadle A. Egal, Somalia; Keily M. Olivares, El Salvador; Francisca Martinez, Honduras; Mariama Diallo, Guinea; Hawa Ba, Mauritania; Mustafa Ashur, Ethiopa; and Lavie Koubaka, Republic of the Congo.
December 17th the students and Rebecca Lance, Graduation Coach at McGuffey, visited Franklin Soil and Water on Dublin Road to share the results of their hard work. They also studied the storm drain model with its running water, miniature neighborhood, and tiny polluters that the brochures will accompany at county events. Barqadle A Egal, a native of Somalia, shared that the translation was at times difficult because some of the words in the brochure had no counterpart in Somali. Afterwards, the students quizzed staff members on their careers and college experiences. Lance commented that the seven were some of the top students in the program and the staff had high hopes for them all to attend college.
Sally Joslyn, School Nurse at the Welcome Center, started the partnership when she asked Franklin Soil and Water to help with a field day at Alum Creek State Park last spring. This fall when Environmental Educator Mary Ann Brouillette was developing materials to accompany the new model, she thought of the Welcome Center students. A grant from the Ohio EPA Office of Environmental Education funded the model and brochures. “The OEPA and Franklin Soil and Water strive to reach under-served communities with the conservation message; and the students were so enthusiastic last spring, I thought I’d run the translation idea by Sally,” Brouillette said. Joslyn’s enthusiasm rivaled the students and she immediately arranged a meeting with the students, Lance, and Brouillette. Joslyn also expanded the partnership, encouraging the students to practice their public speaking skills by presenting the model and its water pollution message in their communities.
Staff at both the Welcome Center and Franklin Soil and Water hope the partnership can become a long-term one. Brouillette hopes that the experience will encourage students at the Welcome Center to consider natural resource careers where minorities are underrepresented. As for Lance, it is one more strategy to help her students succeed against great odds.
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