Every year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, the City of Cambridge along with Education First partners up to present a problem to CRLS students, the Glocal Challenge. The students are put into teams of four to come up with ideas with the purpose of transforming Cambridge
into a more innovative city.

This year, the question was “How can we reduce food waste dramatically by 2018?”

My team’s idea was to implement an anaerobic digester into the grounds behind our school! Once students threw their leftover food away, those
food scraps would be put into an anaerobic digester. Bacteria inside the machine would eat away at the scraps, creating biogas that would be later
used to heat up stoves to create the next meal, cycling through the process again.

On the day of the finals, many city officials, school committee members, and Education First executives and local business people showed up to ask
students questions about their projects. Based on public popular vote and the top teams selected by judges, three teams were chosen to attend the annual Global Leadership Summit, which this year is a 10 day trip held in Italy. Drum roll please…My team was one of the winners!

All of the winners will be attending the conference this summer and I am very excited to tour Italy. Upon coming back, we have a paid summer internship with the City of Cambridge as well as $2500 in seed money to get our project implemented and off the ground- or should I say, into the ground?

– Lamisa