CBF Student Leader MCPS Environment Film Festival Entry

Jacob Chu turned his lens on clean water after seeing an opportunity to weave together two of his passions—fishing and photography. A CBF Student Leader at Poolesville Highschool (PHS) in Montgomery County, Maryland, Chu produced a short film with the PHS Environmental Film Club about the importance of streamside forests (known as riparian buffers) in 2018 after learning about their benefits for water quality during a school fieldtrip. It won second place in the Montgomery County Public Schools Environmental Film Festival.

Now a rising senior in PHS’s Global Ecology Program, Chu plans to create a documentary for his senior project that further explores environmental issues in the Bay watershed. He sees film as an opportunity to spread the message about conservation.

“A lot of the crew members from the film club weren’t necessarily environmental advocates,” he says. “When we introduced them to the local Monocacy River and showed them the things we were filming about, you could see a change in the way they saw local waters.”

As the newly elected co-president of the PHS Chesapeake Bay Coalition Club and the founder of the PHS Fish and Wildlife Club, he hopes to bring that local connection to even more students.

“Many of the students that come to our school don’t live directly in Poolesville and aren’t as in touch with the environment and local waterways,” he says. “I hope that through our work at school and around the Poolesville community, we can introduce ideas about conservation and develop more passion for the environment in students who don’t necessarily come from these areas.”