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The Cape Ann Forum seeks to engage the public in conversations about the rapidly changing social and political environment in which we live and what we can do to make it a better, safer place. We present free, public forums that bring experience and perspectives not often represented in the mainstream media and that give voice to citizens whose concerns, hopes and fears are too often lost or ignored.
FORUM ANNOUNCES ANNUAL HIGH SCHOOL AWARD
Gloucester High School senior Terri Moody received the Cape Ann Forum’s annual international awareness award at City Hall on May 16, 2010 in recognition of her efforts to bring attention to the global environmental crisis among her peers at the high school. The $500 award was presented by Forum chair Dan Connell.
Terri’s first initiative this school year was to expand the recycling program into the classrooms that were not yet participating, according to the GHS teachers who recommended her for the award. When no school or city funds were available to purchase additional recycling bins, the Environmental Club under Terri's leadership organized fundraisers, purchased the bins themselves, and then monitored their use through the school year.
In October Terri led a "350" climate change awareness campaign in the high school and participated in the "350" protest at the Man at the Wheel. The global campaign's goal is to reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. In March she led an Earth Hour campaign at the high school and with Environmental Club members wrote a letter to the editor of the Gloucester Daily Times encouraging community members to participate. She is now organizing a bike-to-work/bike-to-school event for late May.
2008/2009 SEASON AWARDS
The Cape Ann Forum took the occasion of its fifth forum of the 2008/2009 season on May 3, 2009, to announce its annual International Awareness Award to a graduating Gloucester High School senior who has made an outstanding contribution to increasing awareness of international issues and events to her/ his peers. Only this year, there were four awardees.
Normally the award is $500 for one recipient, but since GHS teachers had recommended four exceptional candidates this year, who had worked as a team on a wide range of social issues since middle school, the Forum decided to increase the award and share it among them. As a result, each received $200. The award winners were Britta Akerly, Emily Castro, Isabel Pett, and Chloe Rideout for their unstinting volunteer work in the school’s Amnesty International chapter, the Model UN, the Environmental Club, and more.
Over the past four years, Cape Ann Forum organizers have been developing a relationship with the Gloucester High School out of a concern that the next generation develop the tools and the conceptual framework to grasp what’s going on in the world they will inherit, why that’s important, and what they can do to improve on what we’re leaving them. Forum chair Dan Connell, who teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College in Boston, has done several assemblies at the high school on his experiences abroad, and the organization is assembling an archive of recordings of previous forums to donate to the school.
The Forum, founded in 2001, has been setting aside funds to endow the International Awareness award in perpetuity. This is the fourth year it has been given to GHS students, who are selected with the help of GHS social studies teachers.