Shared Stories

This is a large, broad overview, but I feel that it has powerful impact. As a teacher working with three school boards, I realized that I could help to mobilize the community to target the climate crisis by getting school boards and municipal boards involved. There was positive interest on both sides to initiate action for climate literacy but policies and procedures would get in the way if it was coming from the top, so we decided to spark action from the grassroots up. In Nov 2019, we organized an event to gather students, politicians and community to share ideas and thoughts. By bringing people together into the same space at the same time, relationships were forged to have more meaningful conversations around local issues. The organization of the event was also done by students so students benefitted from leadership opportunities and a sense of doing something real and positive. I found this powerful, that students were so positively engaged and the grade that was involved in the organization of this event also showed better mental health. We want to spread this same initiative through schools across Ontario and even overseas to carry on this tradition of hosting 3 meetings a year by high school students to bring people together and talk about local climate issues. In such, we get a force and show politicians that there is public awareness and initiative while giving information and allowing for networking.

As a high school environmental club we felt successful when other organizations reached out through local networks to collaborate. We now have two members participating in a youth partnership initiative project where mentors meet with us on a regular basis and teach us useful skills such as how to run effective meetings and how to translate vision into action. It’s really exciting that other organizations have heard about us, found us valuable enough to provide support and had resources available to help us increase our capacity. It really made us feel like our work was being recognized. Because of this there’s a lot more connections in our community and we are even working with an organization to hold a fundraiser to engage as many high school students as possible to promote environmental action. It feels great to work with other organizations to show that youth want to make a difference and are game to help out and spread the word.

Through previous advocacy work we had a connection with someone from the David Suzuki Foundation who introduced us to others, building connections from which we were able to establish a relationship with City Transportation. We were then able to provide education and outreach to various communities who were being given transportation infrastructure (e.g. bike lanes), which have historically polarized communities (as many people believe they cause traffic congestion, etc). Through our collaborations, we were able to expand our outreach through mail outreach programs and to work collaboratively with city staff to develop messages and activities that would help residents understand and support bike lanes. We also built another partnership with a non-profit, through which we received grants from the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

It was a long process. It’s taken two and half years to develop Kitchen Table Climate Conversations and the goal is helping people to feel comfortable talking about the climate. The reason it felt successful is we were able to launch a website and hold four webinars this year. This was a culmination of all the work. We’re also holding support meetings where people meet to talk about the different approaches they’re developing. The idea is taking on a life in different communities in so many different ways, everything from a project in Africa to someone who’s started a local art club doing nature-based art exhibits connected to climate conversations. There’s a whole range of wonderful people. It took so long to develop but it’s amazing to see what people are doing. The life it’s taking on is making me feel successful. It’s not just what I’ve done but what everyone’s doing.

In a recent event our youth speaker was late. On impulse I passed the megaphone to a fifteen year old girl standing beside me. She spoke from the heart and was eloquent and clear and was very effective. Later I found she was afraid of public speaking and that she and her family were surprised by what she did. We all realized that when we are put to the test we can do what we don’t think we can if it touches us deeply and affects our future.

The first time I felt really successful was when we were forming the board. We made space for two Indigenous voices if they wanted it. They were originally supposed to be ex-officio directors but we realized through Future Ground Network that it would be better to have them participate in the normal process. We learned to give space to Indigenous members to decide how they wanted to participate. Also regarding Fairy Creek, we realized that you had to listen to voices from all sides and we heard from Indigenous Future Ground Network members that we shouldn’t sit in judgment of any voices.

During my time in high school, I was part of the Environment Club and the Social Impact Club and there was high engagement with the two clubs, we had high turnout rates and lots of people would participate. Some examples of programs we had were our recycling programs, lots of people would participate during their breaks and lunches. Because we had a high engagement level and were able to spread awareness and speak peer-to-peer, all these factors made our work successful.

I’ve also participated in the Climate strike in Sept 2019 and got to meet the Mayor of the town as well as meet key stakeholders and decision makers. I felt empowered participating in this event, a lot of people have said that participating in strikes is useless, but being able to be part of the conversation was impactful as my voice was heard and this is proof that youth voices do have a role in this conversation. I got to deliver a speech of 15-20 minutes during that time. There should be more engagement, more training and educational tools.

A time when I felt successful in my organizing work was with a project we were doing where nine adults became partners for our project. The purpose of our project was to fill a gap we identified in the school curriculum: we wanted to find a fun and engaging way to teach high school youths about climate justice and as well as how to solve it. The people who became partners represented different sectors such as school boards, municipalities, etc. They helped us do a test run for this education program we created. Getting the partners on board was the most successful I felt.

With the recent COVID restrictions we moved to using webinars to reach people and that has been very successful. We were able to pivot to a model where we held webinars with reading lists and a mini-course and it was very effective at getting people engaged and providing a means for follow through, much more so than the days of speakers where the audience leaves afterwards and you have no sense of whether you have effected a behaviour change.

We worked together to create a webinar that we delivered to hundreds of students in the entire school district. It was info-dense, had pre-recorded and live content, and was based on everyone’s levels of expertise. We connected with the school board and teachers from the whole school district to reach students from grades five to eight, and hosted the webinar twice over two weeks. It really made an impact; teachers said it was well presented and we gave out materials and assignments afterwards so that the students could continue learning about sustainability. It turned out well, ran smoothly, and was all virtual. Everyone contributed some piece of knowledge.