DC Youth Environmental Alliance hosted a Youth Summit for DC high school students that brought together students from all quadrants of the city and from public, private, and charter schools to empower them to get involved in sustainably rebuilding their schools and communities. The event was designed to create a dialogue about climate change and social and environmental justice - and how we can accomplish so much if we dismantle the racial and cultural divides between the NW and the rest of the city.

DCYEA welcomed dozens of high school students from across the Washington, D.C. area to Sidwell Friends Middle School to launch the first environmental student network in the city’s history.

And it can’t come soon enough!  Just imagine: hundreds of young people organizing their schools and revitalizing their communities, all DC schools revered for their sustainability and quality, a youth green jobs corps, an end to environmental injustice in D.C. 

The DC Youth Summit is a first step toward this vision.  We believe that an empowered group of youth, drawing from all communities in the District, can and will set the course toward a greener future.

And what better place to have the Summit than Sidwell Friends Middle School, one of the greenest school buildings in the world?  We hope the building itself can serve a model, a vision for all DC students of what their own school buildings could be.

The Youth Summit kicked off with two incredible speakers: Carter Roberts (President of the World Wildlife Fund) and Philip O’Neal (Co-founder of Green DMV).  Students then choose from a number of workshops covering a range of environmental issues. We’re excited to offer workshops on basic organizing, recycling, school gardens, spoken word & hip-hop, energy auditing, and more offered by the Cool Capital Challenge, the Sierra Student Coalition, the Earth Day Network, and student leaders from D.C.

Aside from the free lunch, students got a chance to interact with a panel of young leaders already doing great work here in the District.  Most importantly, a good amount of time was spent allowing students to get to know each other with was a key goal of the event.

At the end of the day, we hope to have the beginning stages of a youth network, a group equipped with the skills and tool they need to make a difference and empower their peers.  Making connections with other young people that share the same passions and interests will be half the battle.  Once the network is formed, high school students will be able to communicate, share best practices, help each other, and come together periodically to plan bigger and better projects and campaigns.

Jeff Gustafson is the director of the D.C. Youth Environmental Alliance.  He started his environmental work after getting involved with a similar high school student organization in the San Francisco area.