Dar Jane Goodall Institute Students Rock.

These kids are unbelievable. Gabriel started the day by showing some of his amazing public service announcements. He led a discussion about identifying a call-to-action, then using both humor and compassion to lead the viewer to your solution to a problem. The kids were quiet, but really attentive. He wasn't sure if he got through to them, but once I took them outside to start filling in authentic "cinematic" storyboards (boxes and lines on a page that allow the students to create stick drawings of their scenes and accompanying narrative text), it was clear that they had understood every word and had wonderful ideas of their own.

Because we're making PSAs about issues that affect Dar and are important to Roots & Shoots, the kids quickly figured out how to create effective films. When I asked them to come up with an idea for showing the bad effects of plastic bags filling the streets, streams, and oceans, they went off for about five minutes and came back with the following.

"First scene...we show a mom and kids walking down the beach (we only see their torsos) with a picnic basket, a blanket, and a bucket and spade. Next scene...we see the mom open the blanket in the air and slowly she lets it fall to the sand. Next scene...once it starts to land, we see that it is not landing on sand after all. It is landing on hundreds of plastic bags, and she couldn't be happier. 'Ah...a nice day at the beach,' she says. Then, we see the kid using his spade to put plastic bags into the bucket to make a 'sand' castle. Fade to black. Finally, we show us saying, At Roots & Shoots, we care about what you do with plastic bags. Please don't let them spoil our environment. Go to http://www.rootsandshoots/. org to find out more about how you can recycle these nasty bags."

It was brilliant. They spent the day with Andy and Jaime learning how to create motion in Premiere. They, again, caught on immediately. It was another magic moment, says Andy, to have one of the kids come to the front of the class and (during a recap moment) explain to everyone how to do this difficult piece of software manipulation. We had another newcomer today, and as she sat down, another of the girls went right to her and taught her everything she needed to know about Premiere in about 15 minutes. Andy looked at me and said, "Did you ask her to do that?" Nope. She did it on her own.

I sat with the kids outside and helped them fill in their storyboards. They have some great ideas. One team is covering the ill-effects of pouring domestic cleaning fluids down the drain, and throwing the almost-empty bottles into the landfills. They'll start their PSA with a shot of all four of them sitting on a mound of garbage at the dump. They'll be having a grand time laughing and using cleaning fluids to wash the garbage. They'll hold the garbage up, announce it fresh as a daisy, then throw it over their shoulders. We'll see the cleaning fluid meander through the trash and end up in the river and then the ocean. Fade to black. They'll come on screen and say, "Throwing cleaning liquid in the garbage might make the dump more clean, but is ruins our rivers and oceans." I couldn't be happier! They totally understand the PSA concept and came up with some very sophisticated ways to get their points across. Thanks Gabriel!

We'll film them tomorrow. They took cameras home tonight to take video and stills. It will all come together on Thursday. Can't wait.

Thursday night we'll visit the orphanage that JGI sponsors. We're bringing food for 150 orphans and spending time finding out about the JGI scholarship program. More on that once we get back. And, now that you have the teasers for the PSAs, we'll be sure to post one when they are finished.

E