What is BEPA? You may ask, BEPA stands for Battle Environmental Protection Agency, the club was started last year by current president of the club Asia Smith, senior. Smith  and other members continue to try and spread environmentally safe habits through BEPA. 

“Our goal is to educate people and engage our school community to learn about our current state of the environment,” Smith said, “to raise awareness for environmental avocation and provide inventive solutions.” 

The club does activities and invites guest speakers to come talk to them about the environment and what they can do to make a difference. 

“In 2020 we partnered with the Sierra Club and had a few representatives from their organization join our zoom and discuss sustainability and the importance of voting,” Vice President Brooke Anich, senior, said. “Last year we made seed-bombs which are balls of clay and soil mixed with Missouri native wildflower seeds, and we would love to have a time and release those around Battle High School,” said Anich.

The club has lots of ideas on how to make the environment clean in our community. 

“Host some river clean ups around Columbia, promote recycling via an advertisement campaign, plant more trees around Battle, and to pick up trash around Columbia,” said Liam Schrader, junior and member of BEPA.

Sydnee Goings, junior and member of BEPA describes even more ideas that they have been mulling over.

“We also might collaborate with another project called Earth’s Workshop, which is very exciting,” said Goings.

Though the club has many ideas and motivation to put their goals into actions, COVID-19 has affected how they do that. 

“We are limited to doing meetings over zoom which is challenging for us. We try to make our meetings more informational and discussion based because it is challenging to do activities,” said Anich.

Smith further explained how COVID-19 has played a role in what they can do.

“In the beginning, we’ve had a various amount of projects that we had wanted to do, but due to the restrictions of the pandemic we are limited in what major projects we are allowed to do,” Smith said.

But that does not mean there is nothing they can do.

“Potentially sell shirts with our logo to our community, distribute seed bombs across the school campus, come in contact with more potential guest speakers from other environmental organizations,” said Smith. 

But through all the challenges BEPA still has their end goal that they want to accomplish.

 “I’m hoping that BEPA can spread awareness on how everyone can make a difference and be more aware of how to be environmentally-conscious,” said Goings. “If we can get more people to feel as passionate as we are about taking care of the environment, we’ll be doing our job,” Goings said. 

If you are interested in making a difference for the environment and are interested in BEPA, contact Asia Smith.