WMDT/Mountaire Future Environmental Star Award Winner for the Month of January

WMDT, Channel 47, and Mountaire Farms are proud to announce Hailey Fretz of Delmar High School as the inaugural winner of the WMDT/Mountaire Future Environmental Star Award. The Future Environmental Star program is designed to highlight and honor those young individuals in our local community who are taking initiative to clean up our environment in their own special way.

A sophomore at Delmar High School, Hailey focuses her energy on organizing environmental projects for her Girl Scout Troop and the school Environmental Club, which she founded as a freshman.  As an 11 year veteran in Girl Scout Troop #246, Hailey is always doing her part for the community, but in recent years she has turned her efforts to environmental work.  Needing to complete a 40 hour project to achieve the “Silver Award” from the Scouts, she and her Troop members developed a program intended to restore the Bay Scape Garden at Trappe Pond in Delmar.  To fund the project the girls began collecting cans and plastic bottles for recycling.  After collecting over 1,500 pieces, they were able to raise over $78 through the State of Delaware’s plastic bottle deposit program and money paid out by Delmarva Recycling for the aluminum cans.  The money from recycling, along with donations from friends and family members, was used to pay for the seeds and other planting material needed to refurbish the garden.  Hailey even designed a map for display which describes the native plants and maintenance plan for the now thriving garden.  Once finished with the Bay Scape garden, Hailey embarked on designing an educational pamphlet for Delaware Solid Waste Authority centered on the Georgetown landfill.  The pamphlet is used to promote the proper materials allowed in the landfill and other means to dispose of waste.

Using her spare time in the summers, after school and on weekends, Hailey compiled over 90 hours of work on the Silver Award project, more than double the required hours, all of which she has documented in a 5 inch thick binder she so aptly named “My Silver Award Project Book”.  With pictures, flyers and stories, the book is a start to finish guide on an extraordinary effort by one young girl to meet a personal goal and help the environment along the way.

“I’ve always wanted to do my part,” says Hailey, “I think doing things to help the environment has improved my outlook on the future.  I’m seeing things through greener eyes.”

 Next up for the newly named Future Environmental Star, working to build on the So What! (SOW) program the Troop and Environmental Club started, a recycling effort with proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House.

"Hailey Fretz is a role model for Girl Scouting and young ladies.  At the age of 15 she is already a veteran of her Scout Troop and a leader in what it symbolizes to the community and those proud to have participated in the program: Community First.  At the age of 5 she began her quest to be the best she could be in scouting, school, at home and for the community in which she lives.  Her innovative development of environmental projects, involving the suppoert from her peers for the health of the land around us is a tribute to Hailey's leadership skills and a true signal of the more positive events to come from Delmarva's youth.  We applaud Delmarva's young people who devote their time and energy to teh love of our land and betterment of the community in which they live."  Roger Marino, Coporate Director of Community Relations.

For more info on the Future Environmental Star Program or how to nominate someone for the award click here