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DISNEY'S ENVIRONMENTALITY CHALLENGE
CELEBRATES 10 YEARS

SIMI VALLEY STUDENTS HONORED AT THE DISNEYLAND RESORT

ANAHEIM, Calif. (April 16, 2004) — Thirty enthusiastic fifth-grade students from Park View Center School in Simi Valley, Calif., were honored today with their teacher, Deni Lopez, as the Grand Prize winners of the 2004 Disney's Environmentality Challenge program. The Challenge is a statewide competition designed to promote environmental awareness and action in the classroom.

Bob Iger, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Walt Disney Company and Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction hosted a 10th Anniversary ceremony at Disney's California Adventure to recognize the class. Also present to honor the students were Terry Tamminen, Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency; John Hayashi, President of the Board for the California Department of Food and Agriculture; Crawford Tuttle, Deputy Secretary of External Affairs for the California Resources Agency; Wayne Nastri, Regional Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency; Kenneth McDermond, Deputy Manager of California/Nevada Operations for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service; and Linda Moulton Patterson, Chair of the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

"I am continually amazed at the imagination and accomplishments of California fifth graders who participate in the Disney Environmentality Challenge," said California Integrated Waste Management Board Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson. "Our environmental future lies in good, little hands."

The Simi Valley students were among over 106,000 students from more than 3,500 classes who participated in this year's Environmentality Challenge. The class impressed judges with its environmental education project, "It's Everybody's Trash." As part of this project, the class managed the school's recycling efforts and developed an informative video to share the program with other schools. They also improved and maintained the school's worm farm and quarter acre garden, recycling more than 2000 pounds of cafeteria waste as worm food. In addition, the class conducted an extensive clean-up campaign at a local park that had been damaged by the recent wildfires, collecting more than 800 pounds of litter and planting 13 trees.

Disney's Environmentality Challenge is sponsored by The Walt Disney Company and the State of California's Environmental Education Interagency Network (CEEIN), a consortium of environmental educators representing California state departments, boards, and commissions with oversight responsibility to protect California's environment. The statewide competition promotes environmental stewardship among students who complete environmental action projects and make pledges to think and act with the environment in mind. More than 600,000 California students have participated in the Challenge since its inception in 1994.