Who are the best folks to educate a neighborhood about environmental issues?

Kids, according to Helen Nakano, coordinator of the Kuleana Eco-Project in the Manoa watershed.

Children from a dozen area schools, with the support of a large group of adult volunteers under the auspices of the community group Malama O Manoa, set out a couple of years ago to spread the word about protecting the watershed, cleaning up streams, reducing water wasting and other issues.

They impressed the community, and each other, and have memorialized the grassroots community-building experience in a photocopied 115-page book, "Water Warriors: Kuleana Eco-Project — A community guidebook for conducting a watershed outreach campaign."

Volunteers sought out teachers and schools, and then trained kids aged 8 to 18 in conducting a three-part survey. First, they would go out into the Manoa area and give residents a quiz — one whose questions were aimed at raising issues about the watershed. Then they'd grade the quiz and provide residents with reading materials on some of the issues. And finally, they'd return later and re-test the residents.

"With adults, I think people would not have accepted it, but from children, they responded really well," Nakano said.

In the second year of the project, students were encouraged to learn about water and be tested themselves, in order to become "Water Warriors." Then they were urged to recruit other students. Some 2,000 people showed up at a Kuleana Eco-Fair, where there were 40 booths provided by government agencies, businesses and environmental groups — and where people could be tested once more to qualify as Water Warriors.

The book outlining the project reviews some of the other conservation and education programs that were part of the Eco-Project, and it includes steps to get such a project organized, copies of the surveys, lesson plans and study guides, details on financial procedures, copies of communications, and pages of information on how the ecology project was started and how it was sustained.

For information or to order a copy of the book, write Helen Nakano at nakano@alo ha.net or call 988-5671.

The point of the effort is outlined in Noelani Elementary School fifth-grader Christopher Iijima's letter, which is included in the book: "A major problem to our Manoa Stream is public indifference. In fact it must be our biggest problem."

If you have a question or concern about the Hawaiian environment, drop a note to Jan TenBruggencate at P.O. Box 524, Lihu'e, HI 96766, e-mail jant@honoluluadvertiser .com or call (808) 245-3074.