Rachel Ray, pictured, is a junior at Baldwin High School and won a national video competition held by Keep America Beautiful where entrants were asked to address the issue of littering. In her video, Ray asked classmates to give ways to help control littering in the community.

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Baldwin High School student Rachel Ray wants to help end littering in her community. The junior entered the nationwide “How Will You End Littering?” video contest held by Keep America Beautiful, and her video titled “End Littering” won for the 11th and 12th grade age group.

“It was a contest to see how you would improve littering in your community — how to stop it, how to involve many people to put an end to it, and how to make your community better for it,” Ray said.

“I was really surprised because I’ve never really tried to do anything with many contests besides stuff that I’ve done in programs here. Learning that it was a nationwide contest and learning that I reached so far to get first place was a really big deal.

For winning, Rachel received $500 to help fund anti-littering activities at her school and a trip for two to Washington, D.C. to the Keep America Beautiful national conference.

Ray and her mother went to the national conference in Washington, D.C. in late January, and the student admitted she went in with not much knowledge about Keep Milledgeville-Baldwin Beautiful (KMBB) but left with a lot.

“I had heard of it through different people … but I had never really known much of what it stood for or what they did with the organization until I did this video contest. Then I went to their national conference in D.C. where I was able to learn what they do, what they stand for, what their focus is, and how they focus on beautification as well as ending littering and fixing the earth through multiple ways instead of just focusing on one thing.”

KMBB Director Ashley Bacon told the school’s media specialist, Pam Longino, about the contest who then reached out to Rachel whose acuity with technology and software knowledge was well known. Not only was Rachel handy with a camera, but keeping the community clean and recycling was something in which she already had an interest.

“It’s something that I’m passionate about that’s been brought to my attention by different family members,” Ray said. “My grandma is really big into recycling, and she focuses a lot on the fact that we can’t recycle metals and glass with Baldwin County because if you do it’s still thrown away with the rest of the trash and taken to the landfill.”

She went on to say that hopefully the video will raise awareness about recycling and lead to more options in the future.

In Ray’s entry, she interviewed classmates asking for ways to help end littering and get others involved in the effort.

The video comes to a close with students shouting, “Our school. Our town. Our responsibility. We pledge to keep it clean!”