Education Grant WinnerPamela Ozuna

Recycling is important to instill in a student’s life at an early age because it helps them to understand the importance of renewable materials as it pertains to our everyday consumer lifestyle and to environmental sustainability. In some cases, the opportunity to recycle is limited, making the trash can a bit exhausted at the end of the day.

Pamela Ozuna, educator at J. B. Passmore Elementary, was eager to give her students the chance to build an eco-friendly community by incorporating a recycling system at the school and have it brand as an educational activity that would pay dividends in the future. Thanks to Power of the Dollar^® members, she was awarded a $1,000 grant in December 2024 for “The Green Collectors” idea, which she then used to purchase recycling bins for each classroom in the school, a handful of grabber tools, recycling baskets, and more!

“The inspiration comes from knowing the need in the long run: saving the earth,” said Ozuna. “Seeing that everything is being thrown away really had an impact on them [the students]. So, we’re teaching them that we need to protect the earth, but we need to practice what we preach.”

Serving as an effort after school, Ms. Ozuna’s assembled a team at Passmore that would take part in helping lead the charge in the recycling realm. Moving together across the school, the students will gather all the recyclables from each classroom—classrooms that now have bins thanks to Ms. Ozuna’s design—and then take them out to the recycling dumpster. Her students will also make time to pick up recyclable material off the school grounds, whether that be inside or outside… and they’re encouraging others, as well!

“In their classrooms, they are taking ownership of it,” said Ozuna. “They are telling their classmates to recycle and not throw it away. They are taking that responsibility with themselves.”