New City School

River Kids 

River Kids - Get With The Flow!

River Kids is a fast-moving group of motivated 4th-10th graders who want to help clean, protect, and preserve St. Louis’ many precious waterways. Among many other things, members get the opportunity to run committees on fundraising and public relations, help organize and participate in river cleanups, develop educational materials and distribute them, plan river-friendly events, or even serve as a Board Member and help decide about the future of this growing organization.

The River Kids Mission:
    *Learn about rivers and associated issues
    *Teach others about these issues and propose solutions
    *Take action on issues and clean the rivers

In Depth on the River Kids:

River Kids is designed to provide kids with a rare opportunity to take action on what is recognized as an internationally significant issue – pollution in our rivers. 

The RK adventure started in 2003 when a group of New City School 4th graders watched a video on Chad Pregracke (Click here to watch:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3298421n) and learned about all of the trash he was finding along the Mississippi River.  Those kids decided they could help by creating their own organization to tackle the same issues along their local waterways.

Over the next few years River Kids members spent a great deal of time and poured their hearts into developing their organization into what it is today, a thriving, exciting group of creative young people with an honest and pure mission – clean and protect our rivers.  They do anything and everything they can to help make a difference on their own and with teams of organizations.  Their list of accomplishments in 6 years of operation is amazing and includes highlights such as

  • several large-scale tree-plantings in coordination with the Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources
  • the operation of an educational booth in Forest Park as part of Earth Day festivities
  • local river cleanups including the River des Peres, the Mississippi, Meremac, and Missouri Rivers
  • establishing a set of youth paddling trips on the Mississippi River with renowned river guide Mike Clark
  • the establishment of a River Kids summer camp
  • the development of our own annual winter cleanup held along a local section of the River des Peres
  • expansion of RK programs into other local schools
  • the installation of a green roof above the dining hall at New City School
  • the opening of a new rain harvesting system in the New City School garden
  • an annual benefit function at the City Museum to raise awareness about rivers and the issues they face. 
  • the development of a 120-foot mural design for a downtown riverfront wall

With the support of local businesses, organizations and private donors, River Kids will be active in the area again this year.