R.A.R.E. has spent every year (4 years now!) celebrating World Turtle Day (May 23) and World Ocean Day (June 8) on Xiao Liu Qiu with beach clean ups, art and community action.  What makes this coral island special is that it has over 100 endangered green turtles, much wildlife and a unique temple culture. Unfortunately the growing tourist industry is taking it's toll and our resources and manpower are limited.

What we would like to achieve as a team of six next summer is the following:

1. This island is a fishing village with styrofoam boxes everywhere. They are light, cheap and terrible for the environment.  Our goal is to start a box exchange program to eliminiate what we can. Using found wood and other discarded material we would create wooden boxes that we can offer in exchange for the styrofoam ones.  

2. Many, many free glass (beer) bottles on the island ; we would like to Re-use and Re-create converting cut bottles into cups and other art objects that we can sell to tourists to sustain our R.A.R.E. "Green" projects or distribute to locals to promote "Green" awareness.

3. A popular local item made on the island with vegetable oil is a twisted fried cookie. The oil is lightly used to maintain a quality cookie and perfect to be Re-used to make laundry or hand soap. This product like the beer bottles would either be sold to tourists to sustain our R.A.R.E. "Green" projects or distributed to locals to promote "Green" awareness.

4. We have been working with the local Driftwood Association for many art projects, using their tools and space to conduct workshops and exhibitions.  We would like to continue to promote art and the theme of Re-duce and Re-use with found material to create a sculpture garden in this large yard space. This "Public" space would be used to promote our "Green" thinking. 

We would like to push our efforts to the next level and accomplish more on a bigger scale.  The funds would be used for room and board for our team including transportation. Our focus next summer is to artistically promote "Reduce, Reuse and Refuse".  As we have worked as a non-profit on the island for four years we have developed strong working relationships that we have relied on in order to move forward.  This is our foundation that we would like to continue to build upon and grow.