We’re now just days away from our first Youth Summit. This Saturday, DCYEA will welcome dozens of high school students from across the Washington, D.C. area to Sidwell Friends Middle School to launch the first environmental student network in the city’s history.
And it can’t come soon enough! Just imagine: hundreds of young people organizing their schools and revitalizing their communities, all DC schools revered for their sustainability and quality, a youth green jobs corps, an end to environmental injustice in D.C.
The DC Youth Summit is a first step toward this vision. We believe that an empowered group of youth, drawing from all communities in the District, can and will set the course toward a greener future.
And what better place to have the Summit than Sidwell Friends Middle School, one of the greenest school buildings in the world? We hope the building itself can serve a model, a vision for all DC students of what their own school buildings could be.
The Youth Summit will kickoff with two incredible speakers: Carter Robers (President of the World Wildlife Fund) and Philip O’Neal (CEO of Green DMV). Students will then have a number of workshops to choose from, covering a range of skills and topics. We’re excited to offer workshops on basic organizing, recycling, school gardens, spoken word & hip-hop, energy auditing, and more offered by the Cool Capital Challenge, the Sierra Student Coalition, the Earth Day Network, and student leaders from D.C. And aside from the free lunch, students will also get a chance to interact with a panel of young leaders already doing great work here in the District. And most importantly, a good amount of time will be spent allowing students to get to know each other.
At the end of the day, we hope to have the beginning stages of a youth network, a group equipped with the skills and tool they need to make a difference and empower their peers. Making connections with other young people that share the same passions and interests will be half the battle. Once the network is formed, high school students will be able to communicate, share best practices, help each other, and come together periodically to plan bigger and better projects and campaigns.
We would love for you to join us on March 14th! Register NOW at:
http://dcyea.org/dcyeahigh-school
Jeff Gustafson is the director of the D.C. Youth Environmental Alliance. He started his environmental work after getting involved with a similar high school student organization in the San Francisco area.
