Connecticut Fund for the environment Local hero: colin carlson.

Eleven year-old Colin Carlson directs a climate change organization called the Cool Coventry Club (CCC) a service project to educate people about global warming and encourage energy conservation at individual, business and governmental levels. He also works with businesses to develop "energy action plans." He has held 25 events in nine Connecticut towns during the past year.

Colin has given away or sold at cost hundreds of energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). He created petitions/collected signatures for town recycling and the Smart Power initiative, and convinced the town grocer to sell CFLs. Since Colin began his work, the number of Coventry residents signed up for Clean Energy has almost doubled, and he has collected hundreds of energy conservation pledges from 17 states.

He has been honored as a first place winner of the Connecticut "Cool It Climate Challenge" and nationally, as a Nestle Very Best in Youth. As a NVBIY, he had the privilege of donating $500 from Nestle to the Connecticut Fund for the Environment. Colin has also used prize winnings to print "I Keep Coventry Cool" bumper stickers and canvas bags to give to people who pledge to reduce their energy use. He was recently the winner of a Do Something Plum Grant, which he is using to produce climate change information booklets he created for Coventry's second grade public school students.  Colin has garnered more than 60 individual and business partners/sponsors for the CCC. He is also on the steering committee of the CT Youth Activist Network (CYAN), an environmental organization run by Colin Bennett of Clean Water Action.

Colin divides his school week between courses at Stanford University's Online High School and the University of Connecticut. A recipient of the AP Scholar award, he plans to attend college full-time beginning next fall, as a biology/environmental studies major. He intends to make environmental conservation his eventual career field.