From: Winston-Salem Journal
KERNERSVILLE - Jaguars in Bolivia may soon have a more comfortable home thanks to students, parents and teachers at Kernersville Middle School.Dave Boyer, who teaches science at the school, has a passion for nature. On four trips to the Amazon, he has spent a total of almost a year in the rainforest. He's building a "green" house in Stokes County that will use solar and geo-thermal energy so efficiently it won't require additional energy from such commercial sources as Duke Energy.
Boyer, 31, encourages his students to become more ecologically aware.
"A lot of them don't have that connection to nature," he said.
In 2007, his students raised money for the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden in Kernersville.
Animals can be a good door to global awareness, he said. He has offered to match up to $500 whatever money students raise for Inti Wara Yassi, an animal-rehabilitation center in Bolivia that rescues jaguars and other animals confiscated from people illegally selling wild animals. Many are endangered species. If possible, the animals are returned to the wild. If not, they are cared for.
In 2002, Boyer and his friend Crystal Ramsey were lost for six days in the Amazon rainforest. (Their ordeal was dramatized on a Discovery Channel television show called I Shouldn't Be Alive.) Not surprisingly, it was a life-changing experience for both, and, one of the things Ramsey has done since is to volunteer for Inti Wara Yassi.
Last year, Boyer invited Ramsey, who now lives in Southern California, to come and talk about the organization. The presentation made a big impression on student Lizzie Thompson.
"It sparked my interest," said Lizzie, who is now an eighth-grader. "I thought, ‘That is something I would want to help.'"
Working part-time at her grandmother's florist shop, Lizzie earned $50 and donated it to the organization. Altogether, she and other students raised a little less than $250. Boyer rounded up to $250 and matched that to bring the total to $500.
When Lizzie asked Boyer earlier this school year whether Ramsey would be coming back, he said that she had no plans to come but that Lizzie was certainly welcome to invite her. After Lizzie wrote Ramsey a letter, she agreed to come again. She will be speaking to students Dec. 18, the last day before the holiday break.
If the total donated to the organization this year comes to $1,000, it could be used to build enclosures, Boyer said.
"That tends to be one of the biggest needs -- better housing for the cats."
As of last week, students -- and some parents -- had dropped about $130 into a jar that he keeps in the classroom and collected about $40 worth of aluminum cans. Seventh-graders Marcie Moore and Grace Cronin are among the students who have been collecting cans and dropping change from lunch into the jar.
"I think it's a good cause," Marcie said.
"If we don't help some endangered species, they will become extinct," Gracie said.
Students also are raising money in other ways. Lizzie and other members of the school's garden club are getting pledges for picking up trash in the community. People also can donate to the organization through its Web site.
Students said that, when they have been accidentally separated from their families at the mall or at a theme park, it was scary, and that it's hard to imagine what being lost in the jungle must have been like. By no means did Boyer's close call sour him on the Amazon, though. He returned each of the following three years -- once staying for six months.
"It was a revitalizing place," he said.
And it kept him in touch with the lessons that he learned.
"It made me think about how I lived life -- what I had done for others, things I wished I had not done," he said. "It made me want to make positive changes in the world."