A group of eight students from Farrington High School are $75,000 winners of a national competition that challenged students to develop an environmental action plan that would inspire a global audience.

About 350 teams from around the country took part in the seven-month, multiphase Lexus Environmental Challenge. In the end, Farrington was crowned one of two national grand prize winners.

"What this did for me was it really changed me from ever doubting," said Catherine Payne, Farrington's principal. "I like to think that I always believed that things can happen. ... I will never doubt the possibilities of what our students can achieve."

The Farrington students — dubbed "The Dream Team" — worked on a project that educated people around the world about the benefits of renewable energy — from wind turbines to solar panels, fuel cells to hydrogen power.

Robin John Delim, an 11th-grader and a member of the team, came up with an idea to create videos promoting alternative energy and post them to social networking Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace.

The team took advantage of Farrington's ethnic diversity and recruited students to help them create video messages in various languages — from French to Samoan to Tagalog to Arabic.

"For the final challenge, we tried to brainstorm about what we could do to spread the word about fuel cells or alternative energy," Delim said.

'REALLY INSPIRED'

Nancy Hubbell, philanthropy manager for the Lexus Division of Toyota Motor Sales, said the national judges were impressed with the work and dedication of the Farrington students.

"The Farrington project was just astounding," Hubbell said. "We were really inspired."

At a ceremony at the school yesterday, Hubbell told the students that they "are the change that I'd like to see in the world."

Chemistry teacher Bebi Davis, 2005 winner of the Milken National Educator award, acted as their adviser. She said she's never been more proud of her students.

"Sometimes they'd leave at 9 at night and in the morning I'd be calling them on the phone," Davis said.

She said the students gave up their two-week spring break to work on the project.

Before they could participate in the final, more-global challenge, they had to compete in four initial challenges, where teams had to help their local environment.

The Farrington students won the "water challenge" for their investigation of marine debris and its effect on marine life. They organized beach cleanups, researched water quality and held community classes on the harm caused by debris.

"They had to have an action plan implemented, carried out and show what difference they made," Davis said.

Of the $75,000 in grant and scholarship money, Davis will get $7,000 for classroom projects and the school will receive $15,000. The students will split $53,000.

FURTHERING THEIR WORK

Princes Rosit, a senior on the team, said she intends to go to the Philippines after graduation and use her prize money to continue her environmental efforts.

She said she's always been interested in environmental issues, especially marine conservation. She also is concerned about global warming and this project has made her more determined to do something about it, she said.

"Maybe I can use the money to share my ideas about using alternate energy," she said.

Delim said he has similar plans. He plans to move to the Philippines and work with public elementary school students.

"As a teenager ... I didn't care much (about the environment)," Delim said. "But then when I got more into it, it just hit me. The environment is important. We're the ones who are going to be relying on it."

Payne said Farrington is typically known for excellence in athletics and the arts. She said Farrington has been working to demonstrate that it excels in academics as well.

"We really need to celebrate our students who are wonderful scholars in the academic area and give them an opportunity to compete and challenge themselves against the best in Hawai'i and the nation," Payne said. "This really shows that we have met that goal."