Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202090292
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM PRICE COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NASHVILLE LENGTH: Medium
GIRL WORKS TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT
When 9-year-old Melissa Poe wrote to the White House on Aug. 4, 1989, she wanted President Bush to save the environment.When weeks went by without a response, she got frustrated.
When the response finally came in an all-purpose form letter, she got angry.
She also got active.
And today she is the 12-year-old head of a 30,000-member environmental organization that distributes 2 million newsletters every other month and organizes and inspires numerous save-the-environment activities.
"I thought the president would take care of everything," the Nashville-area sixth-grader said about her motivation to write the letter.
Worried by a television program that warned of a bleak environmental future, she "really wanted him to respond and tell me everything is OK."
"Because he didn't respond," she said, "that's what got me going.
"I found out I couldn't expect someone else to do something till I was ready to do something myself."
Her letter had suggested that the president put up signs urging Americans to stop pollution. She decided she could put up signs herself. Her mother suggested she call a local billboard company. And the company agreed to put a portion of her letter on a billboard as a public-service message.
Figuring the president wouldn't see the billboard in Nashville, Melissa got the phone number of a Washington billboard company and was on the way to having portions of her letter posted on 250 billboards across the country.
She also organized a club among her schoolmates - Kids for a Clean Environment, or Kids FACE. Some local news media took notice. And she appeared on the NBC "Today" show in January 1990.
The "Today" appearance generated another letter from Bush, this one regretting that "my earlier letter to you did not answer the concerns you raised." Letters also started rolling in from children across the country who wanted to know what they could do.
Initially, Melissa wrote back with suggestions for forming Kids FACE chapters and getting involved in recycling and other environmental activities. But soon the Poe family realized that, as mother Trish put it, "this was going to be something big."
They contacted the Wal-Mart retail chain, which happened to be looking for some environmental activities to support. The company agreed to help prepare a guidebook for children who wrote Melissa and to finance a Kids FACE newsletter.
Kids FACE chapters have adopted roadways for litter removal; cleaned up parks, beaches and river banks; planted trees; recycled; discussed environmental issues with local government officials; and collected evidence of pollution in local water.
The organization has launched a nationwide petition drive asking the federal government to set aside a "children's forest" in each national park and forest. Melissa envisions the areas educating children about the environment and giving them an opportunity to help make nature trails and other facilities.
She and another child environmentalist - Courtney Collins of the Texas-based Children's Alliance for Protection of the Environment - hatched the idea when they met at Yellowstone Park.
Melissa said she has begun to accomplish her goals without the president's help.
"I wanted to get people worried about the environment," she said, "and then I wanted to get people realizing that we needed to start doing something about the environment. Recycle, plant a tree - just do the simple things in life that make a difference.
"Every little thing you do - it doesn't matter how small you are or how small you think you are - you can really make a big difference."
(Children who want to organize a local chapter of Kids FACE, which is targeted at third- through sixth-graders, can obtain an organizing kit by writing Kids For A Clean Environment, P.O. Box 15824, Nashville, Tenn. 37215. Teachers can obtain information for classroom use at the same address.)