For high school students, a Sunday morning is typically a subdued one, whether that be sleeping off a night out with friends or attending church services with family. One group of student activists, however, shook off the passive weekend morning to share ideas of the future they want to see.
At the New Roads School, Sunday was a brainstorm and resource-gathering session for the environmental crusaders of the future, as the school hosted a NextGen Climate Summit spearheaded by the local nonprofit Sustainable Works. A host of local environmental organizations joined the department in offering information to students, screening student films on climate topics and recording testimonials about student views on climate change.
“This is something that [we] wanted to put together because [we’re] trying to get student voices in with the City of Santa Monica to make decisions, so [we] said let’s do a summit [where] we can get students there, we can find out students that would be interested in participating in [the city] becoming more sustainable from a younger generation’s point of view,” said Sustainable Works Co-Executive Director Gina Garcia of the event.
Along with Sustainable Works, participating organizations included Climate Action Santa Monica, Heal the Bay and The Climate Reality Project. Climate Action Santa Monica, a grassroots organization dedicated to climate solutions in the community, offered up information to students about joining the 2024 Climate Corps, a collaboration with the City to have real-world experiences in local sustainability policies and programs. Since 2016, the Climate Corps summer program has provided training and experience in support of the City’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
The summit’s main activity was a brainstorming of what a sustainable future could look like in the city, then working to think of steps that can be taken on individual, community and legislative levels to achieve those goals. Leading the discussion was Walker Wells, a principal with sustainable consulting service Raimi + Associates and the former Executive Director of Global Green USA.
“[Students are] here because they want to affect change that they see [where] there’s a problem, whether its insufficient focus on sustainability, or impending climate change impacts … and that they want to do something about it,” Wells said.
He added that the activity was important for the students “to know where to target their energy” since they “only have so much time and so much energy” to affect change.
“Some things, [like] there’s trash on the ground [and] you pick it up, you can decide to take a shorter shower, and you can decide to change your diet, but then there’s other things that are controlled by entities beyond yourself … that takes a movement,” Wells said.
Along with the brainstorming, the event served as a networking opportunity for the young climate activists who may not have known each other before this past weekend. Along with a lunchtime chat session, the students engaged in activities like a game of cornhole to get to know each other.
“I’m so excited to have this many students here on a Sunday afternoon when they have so much going on in their lives,” Garcia added.