Shaina here –
All around the world we are seeing youth rising up and getting involved in advocating for a stable climate. They are organizing, striking, building community, and educating themselves on the science and the policy considerations that we need to achieve these goals. In Western Massachusetts there are a variety of youth led organizations, and there are community partnerships supporting them. One of these in the Western Mass Youth Climate Summit (WMYCS) which is co-organized each year by Mass Audubon Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary and the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. This event brings together teams of students from regional middle and high schools, as well as home school students, for a series of workshops to learn about climate topics and to design action plans for their schools and communities. The action plans are then implemented over the following year. The conference planning is in part led by youth and supported by students from local colleges. To make it accessible there is no cost for attendees, meals are provided, and each team is given travel stipends. I have been lucky enough to be able to lead workshops at the summit over the past two years and to see these passionate students in action.
Day 1
The first day took place at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in mid November. The venue itself is an inspirational setting as it is a completely green building with rain water collection that is used to water the native plant species growing on site, composting toilets, a solar roof, and more. This day was filled with workshops and summit attendees could choose whichever interested their team most during any given timeslot. The workshops offered included food for the climate, decreasing food waste, energy efficiency, cooler communities, citizen science, climate games, song writing, and a tour of the living building. There was also a keynote address on youth activism, a live music performance, and an entirely vegan, climate-friendly lunch provided by a local business.
Workshops are encouraged to be interactive and to provide a takeaway that students can reference while considering their action plans during the month leading up to the second day of the summit. My workshop was on Food for the Climate, as requested by the student team who planned what workshops they wanted to see offered. It focused on how agricultural emissions fit into the larger picture of overall emissions, types of greenhouse gases generated and what causes them, how land use change factors in, and more. To save paper my takeaway was posted online as a resource links page with copies of the slides and links to the sources for all images in the slides.
Day 2
The second day took place the next month, in mid December, at Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary. The students started the day watching a video on the youth climate delegation attending COP25, the UN Climate Summit taking place the same week. They also took workshops on climate communication and sustainable farming. A portion of the day was spent with each student team strategizing about their climate action plan and then presenting the plans to everyone. Many of the team’s presentations focused on common themes relating to the workshop topics. These included things like increasing energy efficiency in their schools, instituting carpool programs, reducing the amount of meat served in the cafeterias, and reducing waste. It will be exciting to see what they are able to accomplish over the next year.
I’m grateful that a program like this exists in my community. It is a great opportunity for students to learn about climate change and create community centered, youth driven action plans to tackle the issues affecting them. I really appreciate that the design of the event is always done with youth input so that the topics they are most interested in are the ones they get to learn about. As we head into an uncertain climate future it is more important than ever that everyone be involved in planning the transition and advocating for their communities, especially the youth who are inheriting a mess then had no part in creating.
