Alaskan High School Students Build Statewide Support For Controlling Global Warming

The Innovation Center staff traveled to Alaska to train adults and youth to implement successful youth-adult partnerships. As part of a statewide “Youth in Governance” initiative, AYEA member Milly Josephson, adult volunteer advisor Claire Fordyce, and Program Manager Polly Carr attended this two- day training. In addition to promoting youth leadership through the “Youth in Governance” initiative, the AYEA program is cultivating youth voice through a number of other projects, campaigns, and trainings. This remarkable program is truly adding value to the field of youth civic engagement, yielding sensational results. The Innovation Center has been honored to be part of their success.

by Polly Carr, AYEA Program Manager

When members of Alaska Youth for Environmental Action (AYEA) decided to launch a statewide outreach and education program on global warming, they never expected that it would take them from the state capitol to the halls of Congress. This high school leadership program of the National Wildlife Federation has brought its message to communities across Alaska and to members of Congress. In the process it has strengthened and expanded its organizational capacity.

AYEA launched the project in August 2005. During its Summer Get Together training, teens gathered in Homer to learn about global warming impacts in Alaska, the science behind the greenhouse effect, and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the end of the event, AYEA graduate Verner Wilson of Dillingham wrote a "Letter to our Leaders," describing the devastating impacts of global warming on Alaska and demanding national action through legislation reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investment in renewable energy.

“I started this petition to ask our leaders to help protect this place that Alaska youth have inherited, and to protect our lifestyles and cultures,” said Wilson. “Communities like Shishmaref are sinking underwater, and invasive species are affecting the environment that Alaskans have depended upon for thousands of years.”

In November 2005, Wilson’s peers turned his letter into a statewide youth petition, and developed a presentation on global warming. AYEA chapter leaders gave the presentation to over 300 science and social studies classrooms in schools throughout Anchorage, the Matanuska Susitna Valley, Fairbanks, Juneau, Prince of Wales Island, Yakutat, Ketchikan, Sitka, Homer, Soldotna, and Kenai. In addition, teens from AYEA’s Mt. Edgecumbe chapter traveled to their home villages to meet with youth in over ninety communities. The Spirit of Youth Foundation endorsed the effort at their annual banquet, giving the petition even broader statewide representation.

AYEA garnered 5,000 teen signatures from 105 communities in Alaska by April 2006--- more than 10% of the enrolled high school population, and just under 10% of the entire teen population. From April 25-28, a delegation of teens from Dillingham, St. Michael Village, Anchorage, and Yakutat traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with the Alaska Delegation and other Congressional leaders on global warming. They presented their petition to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who requested that a group of AYEA members meet with climate change specialists in Fairbanks to bridge the "science and public awareness" divide on the issue.

AYEA teens also worked on the local level to raise awareness on global warming. During the group’s 2006 Civics and Conservation Summit, AYEA teen leaders promoted legislation to create an Alaska Climate Change Impact Commission. Teens lobbied for a youth seat on the commission and met with over twenty legislators to promote other bills supporting the funding of alternative energy projects.

More successes followed. When AYEA teens introduced a Climate Change Resolution at the Alaska Association of Student Governments (AASG) conference, four hundred teens from over twenty communities unanimously adopted the resolution.. AYEA members hope to push this resolution forward during the 2007 Civics and Conservation Summit. At the end of April, a team of AYEA members held a press event with Anchorage Mayor Begich to announce Anchorage initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. AYEA members presented the petition to the Juneau Assembly and asked for a local model of emissions reduction within the next year.

The climate change initiative has spurred dramatic growth at AYEA. The program has engaged 500% more young people in one year with environmental issues, and five times as many youth as it has ever engaged in the history of our program.

“AYEA’s accomplishments are inspiring from the perspectives of both youth development and social justice,’ says Wendy Wheeler, president of the Innovation Center. “They exemplify the power of youth leadership in action.”