To celebrate Earth Day, the Student Association (SA) put on Earth Week from April 18-23, with a theme for the week of Celebrate God’s creation.
“We thought that celebrating God’s creation would be special to emphasize through a whole week of serving others and creation itself,” junior SA Representation Megan Sledge said.
The SA partnered with other organizations on campus to bring Earth Week to life and get more students involved.
“Sustainable Harding worked alongside the SA and HEAL to set up different events for Earth Week,” sophomore Evan Morgan said. “It is essential for Harding and its community to take care of the environment, and I believe having an Earth Week is a great first step towards that goal”
The organizations set up different events for students to participate in everyday of the week up until Saturday where they hosted a 5K run in the morning and started on the community garden afterwards.
“For Earth Week we had a clean up campus day, a nature photo challenge, service projects that were left over from Bisons 4 Christ, a Stu party, a 5K to raise money for Lynley Eller and a garden work day,” Sledge said. “Thursdays projects
included cleaning windows, maintaining flower beds, weed eating, cleaning up garbage, etc.”
The 5K was hosted on Saturday, April 23, where students and faculty paid $5 to race or walk. The proceeds that were collected from the run went to junior Lynley Eller’s family to help cover medical costs after her car accident.
“The 5K on Saturday [was] an attempt to bring all of campus together to celebrate the earth and enjoy it through outdoor movement,” senior Deanna Hutson said. “And taking it a step further, it’s about enjoying that in community. We are also hoping people at the 5K will stay and celebrate the community garden afterwards.”
After the run, everyone who participated was invited to help out with planting crops at the new community garden by the old Public Safety house. Months of preparation went into this garden and things are finally getting started.
“The garden is just now starting, but everything is planted,” Sledge said. We got the crops in the soil and watered them for the first time. We prayed over the garden and enjoyed putting it together yesterday afternoon.”
