Earth Force’s Keep It Clean – Neighborhood Environmental Trios (KIC-NET)

KIC-NET (Keep It Clean – Neighborhood Environmental Trios) engages youth in improving urban waterways. Through partnerships with government agencies, businesses, schools, and local parks, students explore stormwater runoff in their neighborhoods and take action to improve stormwater management. Students participating in KIC-NET use science, technology, engineering, and math skills to solve real-world environmental challenges. Using monitoring tools and processes, students test local water quality to gather data. They are testing factors like dissolved oxygen, pH and phosphate levels, temperature, and turbidity. They then work with city engineers and STEM professionals to learn what their data indicates, how stormwater management works, and how human activity contributes to runoff. From this investigation, students assess the most pressing environmental issue affecting their community’s resiliency, research that issue, and engineer and execute a sustainable plan.