Published: April 07, 2009 08:55 pm      

NCCC: Eco-model talks green

“Steps to Green” week also includes electronic recycling event today

Some call her an eco-model.

She knows that term is a bit corny, but it gets people’s attention and she works it with the savvy of a waif wearing Versace on the catwalk.

Summer Rayne Oakes is her birth name, given to her by a mother who thought she’d be an artist. Instead she got a science degree from an Ivy League college and started a career as a model in Manhattan. Today she is using her image to draw attention to her passion, and it seems to be working.

“It just wasn’t being done before,” she told an audience Tuesday at Niagara County Community College.

The 24-year-old Cornell University gradate has been on the Discovery Channel, CNN, and written up in many major magazines and newspapers, from Germany to Norway for her work as an environmentalist. Yet she is so down-to-earth and unflappable that when she saw only a dozen or so students came to hear her speak she ditched the microphone and the power point presentation and knelt on one of the seats in the first row to tell her story.

She told the group about the first time she sat down with fashion agency representatives and poured her heart out to them about her choice to work only with socially responsible designers.

The fashionistas listened to her, nonplused, and she was offered only one comment: Her hips were 2 inches too big to attract much work anyway.

She shook her head as she told the story. “Dude, I just told you all this. If you think for one second that 2 inches are going to stop me from doing what I want to do you are sadly mistaken,” she said.

She stood up from her seat, her body tall and slender, and brushed back her long, dark hair.

“The world does not say ‘no’ with a big formal stamp on it, unless you let them,” she said.

The journey that unfolded since has taken her to many places. She has a company in Mozambique, Africa, where locals are creating beauty products, jewelry and furniture. The company’s intent is to try and stop the destruction of the rainforest by providing people with good jobs so they won’t sell off all the trees. She has just signed on to be the face of Payless ShoeSource which is introducing a line of environmentally sustainable shoes and accessories.

“In the broadest sense, we’re all environmentalists,” she told the group. “We all want clean water, we all want clean air and clean food.”

She is hoping more people will find out what they love to do and use that passion to try to improve life on the planet.

“I really want to influence a lot of people and empower them to do things they thought they would never be able to do,” she said.

She uses her blog and other Internet social networking features like MySpace and Face Book to promote her work and explained how technological “toys” have made it easier to permeate the world’s consciousness.

Oakes told a story about her friend, a club promoter, who had all the success he could imagine and was still unhappy. A chance tour to Africa instilled a passion in him to help impoverished communities create clean water. He used the Twitter network to send out instant mass text-messaging notices about fundraisers being held around the world and raised $300,000 dollars for his clean water foundation.

“It’s a great example of doing something you love and parlaying that into social good,” Oakes said. “You never know when you put yourself out there what it’s going to become”

She invited those in attendance to check out her blog at summerrayne.net or read her new book, “Style Naturally: The Savvy Shopping Guide to Sustainable Nature and Beauty” to learn more about her work.

Oakes was speaking as part of NCCC “Steps to Green,” event being held on the Sanborn campus this week.

There are two other events planned:

• Noon-8 p.m. today: A drive-up electronics recycling event on the campus at 3111 Saunders Settlement Road. The NCCC student government, along with the Niagara County Environmental Management Council and county legislator Clyde Burmaster are sponsoring the event. Residents are encouraged to bring their computers and other electronic products to the campus parking lot where students will accept them for recycling.

• 1-3 p.m. Thursday: NCCC student volunteers will be conducting a campus cleanup.