Event Assignment: IYEYS in NYC

This past weekend I had the privilege to attend the International Young Environmentalist Youth Conference in the Bronx. It was put on by an organization called Greening Forward, the largest youth-driven, youth-engineered environmental organization. Charles Orgbon III, a current college student at the University of Georgia, founded the organization in 2008. Partner organizations at the conference included the New York City Department of Education’s Sustainability Initiative, Solar One, Earth Echo International, Bronx Green-Up, Environmental Professionals of Color, Alliance for Climate Education, Rocking the Boat, GenerationON, IDEAS, Leave it Better, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Point CDC.

The Point CDC is where the conference was held. It is a community center in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx, engaging youth in incredible ways through merging art and political education and civic engagement.

Several panels were offered at the conference, but I specifically attended “Diversity & the Environmental Movement” with the Environmental Professionals of Color,  “Climate Change” with the Alliance for Climate Education, “Digital Environmentalism” with Greening Forward, an “Environmental Justice Tour” of Hunts Point with high school students from the Bronx, and “Activism for Conservation” with the Wildlife Conservation Society.  The second day, everyone visited Rock the Boat headquarters and was shown some of the incredible work that organization is doing.

The most meaningful part of the conference, for me, was the environmental justice tour of Hunts Point.  Led by A.C.T.I.O.N. teens from the Point, these teens led us around their community, highlighting both problems and progresses regarding the environmental condition. Hunts Point is an industrial neighborhood; 15,000 trucks drive through every day on their way in and out of NYC. This creates incredibly polluted air. The tour leaders said that nearly all of them had asthma and had to have air purifiers in their homes; to get to a beautiful park in their community, students have to walk nearly a mile through truck traffic which.

Students have been working hard to help their community, though. They have led the movement to create greenways in their community, patches of greenery on roadways and sidewalks that help create a healthier neighborhood.  Students also pointed out murals that are being used to help educate the neighborhood about their civil rights; the one currently painted explains that you have the right to film police brutality. During the tour we passed a closed juvenile prison—located between a convent and a preschool—that was known for its incredibly high rates of recidivism; kids who were locked up for minor infractions came out hardened criminals who ended up in maximum-security prisons. Hearing the stories of this place from two young Hispanic high school men was incredibly powerful; one of these students is in the last phase of the audition process before being accepted to Julliard.

The Digital Environmentalism panel is the one that most relates to this class, but generally provided social media tips that I already knew and was geared towards running a social media page for a green organization. One interesting takeaway was something that got mentioned briefly: Facebook is changing its algorithm so that pages have less natural reach and are forced to use paid promotion to reach more people. To me, this has a huge implication for how social media can be leveraged; if organizations are now expected to pay, that may mean that social media is becoming less of an equalizing platform for social justice organizations.

The other panels I attended were helpful and interesting, but not as meaningful to myself, or this class. This conference did, however, offer some insights into how social media can connect students from across the country; the students who were in charge and planned the conference came from all over the country. A conference like this, without social media, seems like it would be nearly impossible to plan.

Overall, I think this was a powerful event. It might have been more meaningful for younger students, but even as a college senior I left with a new understanding of what it means to be an environmentalist.