Generation Earth hosted our inaugural Environmental Youth Summit on March 30, 2023 at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The summit offered an exciting and inspiring day of learning for over 200 young environmental champions from 9 different schools. Students participated in a rich variety of workshops on topics such as school greening and environmental health, the benefits of trees, native plants and biodiversity. They explored approaches to becoming leaders in their communities and discovered a variety of environmental career pathways at our green career panel. At lunchtime they perused resource tables from a range of environmental organizations, painted terracotta pots and planted native seeds to take home and made eco-friendly pledges at our photo booth.
The true highlight of the day was the student presentations. A few students were chosen to share their Generation Earth projects with attendees. This was incredibly inspiring, not only for the rest of the students but for everyone in attendance. These presentations showcased tangible examples of how powerful youth-led action can be, which really complemented the message from the keynote speaker, Andy Lipkis. Andy was just 15 years old when he first founded the organization TreePeople and now TreePeople has involved over 3 million people in planting over 3 million trees. Any one of these students could have a similar impact in their communities. There is nothing but possibility ahead of them and there has never been a better time for young voices to lead the environmental movement.
The Generation Earth team put a lot of effort into making the Youth Summit a reality, so we were thrilled to be able to share the event with students. The response was incredible and we are already looking forward to next year. If you are interested in bringing your students to the Environmental Youth Summit 2024, please let us know. We had a lot of interest this year and we anticipate even more interest next year. The best way to ensure your attendance is to schedule a project with one of our coordinators early in the fall.
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