Youth Environmental Activists of MN - YEA!MN
InCommons Collaboration Challenge
Youth Environmental Activists of MN - YEA!MN
Student activists from 25 metro area high school environmental clubs formed our Youth Environmental Activists of MN network in 2007 at a meeting at Hopkins High School. YEA!MN is co-sponsored by the Will Steger Foundation and Alliance for Sustainability.
Every month diverse youth leaders from 10 urban and suburban high schools meet together in our YEA!MN Steering Committee to plan our student networking gatherings and projects.
We feel that the current generation of leaders is making decisions that may cause hundreds of years of irreversible damage to our global climate. U.N. Scientists are warning us that CO2 continues to increase and that glaciers and ice sheets are melting at a faster rate.
As youth we are becoming the leaders of TODAY by connecting with other youth across Minnesota, our region and nation to ensure our government protects the rights of young people and future generations.
YEA! MN students have the opportunity to:
• Participate in events and actions on a national scale
• Connect with student leaders at the college level around campaigns, events, and trainings related to youth leadership on climate change solutions
• Meet other high school students across the metro area committed to climate leadership, and collaborate across districts on joint sustainability projects
• Gain inspiration, support, and guidance on student-led projects related to environmental sustainability on their own high school campuses
• Further develop their leadership skills through participation in the YEA! MN student steering committee.
About You
About You
First Name
Sean
Last Name
Gosiewski
Country
United States
About Your Organization
Organization
Youth Environmental Activists of MN / AforS / WSF
Organization Website
Organization Phone
612-331-1099
Organization Address
1521 University Ave SE
Organization Country
United States, MN, Hennepin County
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Your Story
Collaboration Title
Youth Environmental Activists of MN - YEA!MN
Country your work focuses on
United States, MN, Hennepin County
Describe your locally-based collaboration and the problem it sought to address
Student activists from 25 metro area high school environmental clubs formed our Youth Environmental Activists of MN network in 2007 at a meeting at Hopkins High School. YEA!MN is co-sponsored by the Will Steger Foundation and Alliance for Sustainability.
Every month diverse youth leaders from 10 urban and suburban high schools meet together in our YEA!MN Steering Committee to plan our student networking gatherings and projects.
We feel that the current generation of leaders is making decisions that may cause hundreds of years of irreversible damage to our global climate. U.N. Scientists are warning us that CO2 continues to increase and that glaciers and ice sheets are melting at a faster rate.
As youth we are becoming the leaders of TODAY by connecting with other youth across Minnesota, our region and nation to ensure our government protects the rights of young people and future generations.
YEA! MN students have the opportunity to:
• Participate in events and actions on a national scale
• Connect with student leaders at the college level around campaigns, events, and trainings related to youth leadership on climate change solutions
• Meet other high school students across the metro area committed to climate leadership, and collaborate across districts on joint sustainability projects
• Gain inspiration, support, and guidance on student-led projects related to environmental sustainability on their own high school campuses
• Further develop their leadership skills through participation in the YEA! MN student steering committee.
Tell us about the community in which this collaboration took place
As youth leaders, we sometimes feel a little out of place in our urban and suburban high schools since we feel so passionate about protecting our community's future. Before YEA! MN was formed our metro school environmental clubs worked in isolation. Now by working together through YEA!MN we can share strategies on how to get our school administration to model green and sustainable practices.
Issue Selector
n/a
Partnership
Who was involved in co-creating or implementing your collaboration (other organizations, leaders, community members, etc.)?
Diverse student leaders from Hopkins, Edina, Mpls South, St. Paul Central & Como, Mounds Park Academy and the School for Environmental Studies organized YEA!MN in the fall of 2007 with support from the Alliance for Sustainability and Will Steger Foundation. 25 urban and suburban high schools are now active. We also work closely with MN Schools Cutting Carbon, the MN Energy Challenge & Sierra Club.
To what extent does your collaboration involve partnerships that are outside or cross traditional organizational or sector boundaries?
Youth of all races and incomes, including immigrant youth are active with YEA! MN Youth from urban schools and suburban schools share ideas through YEA! MN. We link with youth in rural MN through YES! MN and around the nation through the Energy Action Coalition. Our voices matter when we speak with our city council, state & federal legislators. We bridge the generational divide.
Innovation
What makes your locally-based collaboration innovative and unique?
Youth of all backgrounds, including immigrant youth are active with YEA!MN. Diverse youth from 10 schools lead YEA!MN through our Steering Committee. Our youth have incredible opportunities to develop as leaders. YEA! Mn recently participated in the National Green Schools youth summit where they met with over 100 student leaders from across the U.S. to plan their school projects. YEA! MN graduates are going on to lead on their college campuses and in their communities.
Our participating high schools include:
St. Paul: Humboldt, Como, Central, LEAP academy, Avalon, River’s Edge,
Minneapolis: South, Southwest Washburn, Blake, DeLasalle,
Metro: Stillwater, Mahtomedi, Mounds Park Academy, School for Environmental Studies, Lakeville, Burnsville, Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Blake, Benilde, Orono, Osseo, Champlin Park, and Irondale.
By working together, we have more fun, find funding for our projects, gain confidence to talk with elected leaders & explore green careers options with adult mentors.
Did you take risks in establishing this collaboration? Explain
The student leaders elected to serve on the YEA!MN Steering team plan the gatherings and projects and are taking a big risk by taking on extra responsibility on top of their demands of school, part time jobs and applying for college. Diverse urban and suburban youth are taking risks to get to know students different from them selves and to meet with school administrators and elected leaders.
How did this collaboration differ from the normal way of doing your work?
Normally our school environmental clubs take on simple projects like starting up school recycling. Through YEA! MN we challenge one another to take on bigger challenges like installing a solar panel, getting our school to have an energy audit or raising money to attend the U.N. Climate summit. We recognize what it will take to create a clean, just and sustainable world and we want to do our part.
Impact
How do you know your collaboration has been effective?
Growing our YEA!MN network to reach out and involve more schools and expand our YEA!MN Steering Committee.
Keeping our clubs growing from year to year by involving students from every grade.
Helping reduce global warming pollution. Over the last year 800 YEA! MN families pledged to reduce a total of 1,000+ tons of CO2 annually through the MN Energy Challenge. Schools Cutting Carbon helps us track the impact of our school projects.
We also make sure that our voice is being heard by decision makers on our city council, at the state legislature.
What progress or impact has been made?
Please visit www.yeamn.org for our projects! 800 families pledged to reduce 1,000+ tons of CO2 annually www.mnenergychallenge.org. South H.S. installed solar panels. 400 students biked to school. SES students attended the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Hopkins cleaned up ¼ mile of Minnehaha Creek. 6 students met with Sen. Klobuchar
Next Steps
How would you go about continuing, expanding, or replicating this collaboration?
We will invite more schools to join YEA!MN & our Steering Team and will support our schools to reach out to involve diverse students from all grades and will match more adult mentors with more school clubs to help them acheive more.
We will create clusters of nearby schools to make it easier for students to stay connected.
We will stay in touch with school clubs in rural MN and around the U.S. we meet at national and international events.
Richmond Appleton, our YEA! MN Coordinator who works for the Will Steger Foundation is a Liberian immigrant who recently graduated from Augsburg College in Environmental Studies. Richmond will be meeting with each of our school teams one-on-one to help each school team plan their next steps for the projects we planned at our Youth Summit last week. Richmond is also linking in more diverse youth, especially from urban neighborhoods.
Describe the current stage of implementation and desired next steps
We have made huge strides this year engaging more students from more schools, especially urban schools like LEAP Academy, Humbolt and urban charter schools.
All of our school teams came up with ambitious project goals for 2010/2011 at our Youth Leadership Summit on Oct 25 – for example – putting a solar panel Stillwater High School and a community garden at Champlin Park.
Funding from the In-Commons fund would make a huge difference for us right now to help provide seed money for our school projects and to provide more staff time for Richmond Appleton, our YEA!MN Coordinator (a Liberian immigrant who recently graduated from Augsburg College) to meet one on one with each of our 25 school teams to help us next steps for the projects and connect us with additional adult volunteer mentors that can help us carry out our projects.
Our next YEA!MN Gathering will be hosted by the South High Green Tigers on Saturday November 13 for students to link up with in neighborhood community garden and weatherization projects.
Because of driving distances are so huge between schools we will create clusters of nearby schools in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the north, south, east and west metro for students to stay connected.
We are also working to improve our outreach and communications within each of our schools by helping all of our participating schools have Face book pages for their environmental clubs and linking them to our main Face Book page.
We are very excited to stay connected via skype with the student delegation from the School for Environmental Studies that will travel to Cancun in December for the U.N. Climate Summit.
We will send a YEA! MN delegation to D.C. in February for the next national Power Shift weekend with 10,000+ students.
In June we will have a retreat next year's Steering Team.
| Name | Country | Liked on | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Beth Mercer-Taylor | United States | 2010-11-23 18:29 |
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