How It All Started

The idea for the Campus Improvement Team was born over a lemon loaf at a Starbucks. I was hanging out with Samantha Liu, who runs the One Green Step club at ORHS, along with Lora Watts, a professional muralist, and Gina Johnston from Project Green. Samantha mentioned she wanted a mural to go with the new school garden she was working on, and as an art kid, I couldn’t help but get excited! The thought of creating something big and colorful for our campus was all it took to get my wheels turning.

I started thinking, what if we had a group dedicated to making our school brighter, more creative, and more “us”? Not just one project, but a bunch of them. A club for students who want to use their creativity to make our spaces feel more welcoming and fun. That’s when the Campus Improvement Team was born!

Our first project was the garden mural, created in collaboration with One Green Step. It’s bold, colorful, and ties right into the nature vibe of the garden. We’ll share more about how it all came together in another post, but for now, just know it was the start of something we hope will keep growing, one project at a time.