Get Adara to the Genius Olympiad

Hi! My name is Adara Rutherford. I'm 16 and live on the beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast where I've spent the past year working on a project titled: Seasonal Variation of Water Quality in the Bay of St. Louis and the Mississippi Sound. My project brought me to regional and state science fairs and even has given me the opportunity to attend the GENIUS Olympiad, an international high school project competition about environmental issues that is hosted at the State University of New York at Oswego June 14-24, 2015.

I began studying water quality when I was only 12, after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and I have continued to pursue independent research projects on it yearly. It's such an important topic for our coastal ecosystem. As Dr. Suess says in The Lorax, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful a lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Well, our coastal water quality is something everyone should care about! Water quality touches everything here: human health and livelihoods, animal habitats and extinctions, environmental quality and ecosystem stability, and the very culture and heart of this region.

It's something I've become passionate about and I'm thrilled to have an opportunity to bring my research to other young environmental scientists. I'm so excited for this amazing chance to travel, share the findings from my project, and learn from my peers at the Olympiad. Terra Science and Education, which hosts the Olympiad, is also offering a side trip to visit the big campuses in the region (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and MIT). I never imagined I would ever step foot on an Ivy League campus--I'm just a girl from Mississippi!

This trip is a little out of my reach though, so I could use your help. My father passed away when I was 3, and it's just me and my mom; the cost of travel to New York plus the additional tours and Ivy League trip is just out of our budget. I am asking Go Fund Me to help me raise $3554 to help me cover these costs. I am very grateful for anything you can give!! Every single dollar is truly appreciated. Even if you are unable to donate, I would appreciate it if you just share this with your friends and on social media. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for taking the time to read this.

Along the way, I plan on blogging about my trip and sharing my pictures, excitement, and hopefully a little inspiration that anyone can advocate for our environment. Please, please, please help me get there!!

For more information about Genius Olympiad, you can click here.