"Roots creep underground everywhere and make a firm foundation. Shoots seem very weak, but to reach the light, they can break open brick walls. Imagine that the brick walls are all the problems we have inflicted on our planet. Hundreds of thousands of roots & shoots, hundreds of thousands of young people around the world, can break through these walls. We can change the world."

-- Jane Goodall

In 1991, Jane Goodall started to break though these walls with 16 students sitting on her front porch in Tanzania, Africa. There, the environmental group Roots & Shoots was born.

Roots & Shoots now has students in 6,000 groups in 87 countries, doing activities to help animals, humans and the environment. Members range from preschool to college students. Y-Press recently interviewed students in Collierville, Tenn., Parma, Ohio, and Bridgewater, N.J.

In Collierville, near Memphis, Roots & Shoots began as a middle school environmental club that now includes students from St. George's High School, said freshmen Alex Harkess and Georgina Burton and sophomore Grace Askew.

"We just discuss ideas about what we want to do and ways to improve the environment and ways that we can get people together who would be fun and also helpful to the community," Grace said.

In Parma, Amelia Rinas, 17, was inspired by Goodall to start a program that benefits animals at the nearby Cleveland Metropolitan Zoo and elsewhere.

"In fifth grade, my teacher told me about Jane Goodall and about a lecture that she was giving at one of the colleges near where I live. My parents went to take me to go see her, and in her lecture, she was talking about Roots & Shoots and that it was an environmental youth program," said Amelia.

In Bridgewater, Roots & Shoots is based at Hillside School, which has a six-acre wildlife refuge and bird sanctuary, as well as a meadow and freshwater marsh.

"When I got into Hillside, I heard a lot about the environmental club and their back yard. When I saw it, I was amazed," said Lauren Hendricks, 11.

All three groups have done a lot to meet the organization's mission of fostering respect and compassion for all living things, promoting understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and inspiring each individual to take action to make the world a better place. They work toward the mission in different ways.

"When we all meet, there's about 128 of us," Lauren said.

"Sometimes we go outside and we have like backyard workdays, and other times we figure out ways we could improve our school, like how we can recycle more or compost more."

The Tennessee group is also an after-school program, while Amelia started the Parma group six years ago in her home.

They all work hard to meet the main focuses of the Roots & Shoots program: care and concern for the environment, for the human community and for animals.

"Right now we're working on a recycling system at our school," Georgina said. "In the past, we've sent clothes to Mexico. We sent computers to Tanzania."

The Parma group has focused on helping zoo animals.

"One of our most famous projects is our gorilla garden," Amelia explained. "It's a vegetable garden in my back yard, and we grow just about any vegetable you can think of. And then we donate it to the zoo (for the gorillas)."

But Amelia said their most challenging project was a letter-writing campaign to the Kellogg Co. in Battle Creek, Mich.

"We wrote to Kellogg's because they were using a live chimp on their cereal boxes, and on the box the chimp would be smiling. And we did some research, and we figured out that a chimp doesn't usually smile on its own. It has to be either hurt or bribed to smile because in the wild when a chimp smiles, it usually means they're scared or afraid," she said.

"We got a letter back from them saying, 'Well, we've had good responses from the ad, and we're not gonna change our ad.' So to face this challenge, we made a petition and we sent it to all the Roots & Shoots groups. . . . And since that, the Kellogg Co. has been using cartoons instead of real chimps."

One of the students' favorite parts of participating in Roots & Shoots is the annual North American summit.

"It's where Roots & Shoots groups from all over the country get together at one spot and they share their ideas," said Amelia.

"You get to meet Dr. Jane and all of her friends. It's really just a big learning experience," added Alex. "I think that young people around the world are starting to realize that they are the future and that if they don't pursue an active role in being the future, that it's just not going to work for them."

More information

To learn more about Roots & Shoots, go to:

www.janegoodall.org/rs/

Or contact:

The Jane Goodall Institute -- USA Headquarters

8700 Georgia Ave., Suite 500

Silver Spring, MD 20910-3605

Telephone: 1-301-565-0086

REPORTERS: Allison Gardner, 13; Amanda Finch, 14; and Katie Bolinger, 13.