January 31, 2012 For Immediate Release For Media Requests Contact: Kyle Thiermann kyle@surfingforchange.com 831-334-7060 (cell) Film available on surfingforchange.com
“Surfing for Change: J Bay Nuclear Plant” is a new short film exploring the dangers of a planned nuclear power plant in the pristine shores of Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa. Made by youth environmental activist, pro-surfer and filmmaker Kyle Thiermann, the film calls attention to the potential for environmental disaster if Eskom, South Africa’s national power company, locates the nuclear plant in the waters of one of the most famous surfing destinations in the world.
Featuring interviews with renowned environmental leader Van Jones, 11-time Surfing World champion Kelly Slater, documentarian Foster Gamble and local surfing activists, the film calls attention to the inherent dangers of nuclear power in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster — the largest nuclear failure since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
Underscoring deep concerns about what’s at stake, the film also offers a personal perspective from Takayuki Wakita, a Japanese surfer whose family lived 100 kilometers from the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant and now resides in J Bay.
“Surfing for Change: J-Bay Nuclear Plant” available for free through viral web outlets like YouTube, challenges young people to take action and use social media channels to support global opposition to the power plant, encourage exploration of alternative energy sources and points to decisions made by leading European countries to abandon nuclear power plants —Germany will end its nuclear power plant usage in ten years.
Thiermann hopes the film will aid the efforts of local residents who are fighting against a billion dollar initiative that promises employment opportunities in the short term; but risks future environmental catastrophe. “I met amazing people working to stop the plant from being built,” he said. “If it is built, the landscape would be transformed with the building of a power plant. And, the lives of these residents will also be transformed. And not for the good.”
“Surfing for Change” film series shows people who don’t consider themselves activists how to adjust simple daily actions to strengthen their local communities and protect the environment. His film Claim Your Change detailed how money kept in multinational banks is used to finance destructive projects worldwide. It inspired people to move hundreds of million of dollars of lending power into local banks and credit unions. Since then, he has made movies ranging from the importance of shopping locally to following a plastic bag to Hawaii. Kyle has surfed his way across Indonesia, Chile, Peru, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Australia, Hawaii and throughout the US. For more information visit surfingforchange.com.
Posted by Carra Beth Cheslin on January 30th, 2012 MobilizeU
College and
university students have consistently been at the forefront of the
environmental movement, rallying and taking a stand for our planet. 2012 will
be a critical year for the environment; as our climate and natural environment
are rapidly changing, a host of major national elections occur, and the
prominent Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development takes the world stage. Thus
the time is now for universities to again lead the way in creating environmental
change.
As part of Earth Day Network’s
global effort to Mobilize The Earth™, Earth Day University is activating
college students to join the MobilizeU movement and enable their campus
environmental initiatives to have a greater impact than ever before.
MobilizeU is an international competition between
colleges and universities that calls upon students to mobilize their
campus communities around four weeks of environmental activism surrounding
Earth Day 2012 (March 29 - April 29).
Over the month-long competition, students will organize activities such as
campus clean-ups, new voter registration drives and Earth Day events, as well
as amplify environmental initiatives they are already working on at their
schools.
Each of these
activities will be broken down into a calculable number of “acts of green” – actions
that either educate someone about the environment or reduce an individual’s
carbon footprint. During each week of the competition, School Coordinators from
each participating university will report the number of acts of green they generated
and post a creative photo or video documenting their efforts to the MobilizeU Facebook hub. A central
objective of MobilizeU is to build an international movement of student
environmental activists. Thus, student Regional Coordinators will be working to
initiate an exchange of ideas as well as a sense of community between students
across the world.
Every act of
green generated during MobilizeU will contribute to Earth Day Network’s global A Billion Acts of Green®
initiative which will be presented to world leaders at the Rio+20 Summit on
Sustainable Development this June. Thus, MobilizeU provides a platform for
college students to amplify their environmental initiatives on an international
level have a significant influence on global environmental change.
Posted by New Leaders Initiative on January 17th, 2012
Intern With New Leaders Initiative!
The New Leaders Initiative is seeking 2012 interns! As an intern with New Leaders Initiative, you’ll be involved in the exciting process of elevating bold, emerging, young leaders in the environmental movement through the Brower Youth Award as well as our various year-round programs. You will be exposed to some of the leading grassroots and national youth-led efforts and have the opportunity to learn the ins-and-outs of working in an environmental non-profit. A typical day could consist of working in our office, conducting outreach on the phone and email, performing various research tasks, helping to organize an educational event, or promoting our work through various social media outlets. There may also be occasional visits to schools, organizations and to youth and environmental events around the Bay Area. Intern tasks vary seasonally according to our application and program cycle and they can be categorized into these broad areas:
Outreach & Communications
Application Recruitment & Processing
Event Planning - Media Outreach and Promotion
Event Planning - Soliciting for In-Kind Donations and Program Partners
Tasks Include:
• Recruitment: Assist our team in reaching out to a wide spectrum of schools, organizations and youth activists encouraging them to apply for our programs.
• Event Planning: Assist in creating dynamic events throughout the year as well as create a high-energy week of activities for Brower Youth Award recipients in October.
• Research & Archive: Aggregate information about potential partners, collaborators and archive organizations and individuals the program has been involved with in the past.
• Local Outreach: Telephone and e-mail outreach to grassroots groups, tabling at local events, short speaking engagements with campus and community groups.
• Fundraising: Research and contact potential foundations, corporations and in-kind sponsors.
You may also be asked to support other areas of the organization if help is needed.
Hours
Interns should commit 12-30 hours weekly. Internships will last 3-4 months in the spring and fall, and 2-3 months in the summer.
Qualifications
The intern must be comfortable and confident with public contact in person and over the phone. Resourcefulness and the ability and desire to take initiative and follow through projects until completion is essential. The intern must also be able to articulate needs to the rest of the New Leaders Initiative team. Familiarity with Word, Excel, e-mail and Google docs is necessary. Graphic design skills familiarity is a plus! And of course, a strong interest in youth environmental activism is key.
Benefits
You will be interacting with some of our nation’s most dynamic young activists. Hone your people skills, organizing tools, web skills and get your feet wet with one of the best youth environmental organizations out there! In addition, we’re located in the David Brower Center- a hub of amazing and diverse environmental and social change organizations. Our office atmosphere is friendly, warm and relaxed!
Our internships are unpaid, but a transportation stipend may be available.
Interested?
Send resume and brief letter of interest to Program Director, Anisha Desai at anisha@earthisland.org. No calls please. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Posted by George Blacksell on August 25th, 2011 The Ecologist
Social agitation in reaction to injustice
is an age-old phenomenon, and more recent activist movements have ranged
from the so-called slavery abolitionists of the early 19th century to
the African-American civil rights movement in the 1950s. According to
Sharon J. Smith, ‘climate justice is really the defining issue of our
generation’ and the modern day environmentalism movement is the focus of
her book, The Young Activist’s Guide to Building a Green Movement and Changing the World.
The book acts as an eco campaigners almanac, a go-to guide for people
interested in making a positive difference to the environment. The
clever use of successful activist’s personal accounts and the
overwhelming enthusiasm with which it is imbued mean that Building a
Green Movement is more than just a guidebook.
Smith found inspiration for the book from her role as the program
advisor of Earth Island Institute’s Brower Youth Awards, which honours
some of the most successful environmental leaders in North America under
the age of 23. The book collates the remarkable stories of the winners
of this award and effectively uses them to construct a template to being
a green activist.
The book is divided into sections that should be on the agenda of all
budding eco activists, and include creating everything from an action
plan for your environmental initiative to garnering support and
followers, and gaining funding. Smith is methodical in her approach to
writing and each of her own tips and pointers tend to be backed up with a
‘success story’ of how they have been implemented by individuals in
real-life examples.
The informal writing style used ensures that the book is very
accessible (and it is easy to glean the necessary information from it
quickly). At the close of each section the reader is presented with a
list of relevant resources such as research groups and networks to get
involved in.
The book begins by impressing upon the reader the
imperative for change. One of the reasons cited to enact such change is
the stark fact that the current extinction rate of natural species is
more than ‘a thousand times higher than the natural rate’ but at no
point are the scare mongering tactics used by some environmentalists of
old employed in this work.
Instead, Smith takes a refreshingly different approach and focuses on
positive potential the youth of today posses to enact change. Clearly
Smith doesn’t believe overwhelming the reader with worst-case climate
change scenarios is the best way of getting an environmentalist’s
message to resonate with people, young or old, and I would
wholeheartedly agree.
Ultimately, young people are the real
stars of this book and there is a wealth of young visionaries’ stories-
some of whom began their projects from as young as 9 years old! The
author cites that her inspiration comes from ‘the witnessing [of]
storytelling by individuals and groups who are courageously working on
these issues’. One of the most impressive is that of Alex Lin, an eleven
year old who became concerned with the growing amounts of discarded
electrical equipment or ‘e-waste’.
Not only did Alex set up a partnership with a recycling company to
install a permanent receptacle for e-waste in his hometown of Rhode
Island, but he also drafted a sample resolution to ban the dumping of
e-waste and lobbied the state legislators to adopt it. Through
determination and perseverance, Alex and his team proved instrumental in
making Rhode Island the fourth state in the US to adopt a bill
requiring the proper disposal of e-waste in 2006, achieving all of this
by the age of thirteen.
Stories such as this serve to prove that it’s not just the
multi-national companies and corporate lobbyists who have the power to
shape laws.
The all important inspiration can also be drawn from
activists from movements outside of the environmental realm and Smith
refers to the stand taken by Rosa Parks by refusing to obey the order of
a bus driver and how it ‘helped to incite the civil rights movement to
victory.’
These stories of frustration and injustice can be a source of
motivation and Smith is acutely aware of the need for leaders in the
quest for ‘climate justice’. For those who are not natural born leaders,
and lets be honest few can boast the initiative of shown by young
individuals such as Alex, the book provides a great toolkit to help kick
start their own environmental activism journey.
The wealth of
practical information given in the book provides a roadmap for
burgeoning movements, and it will undoubtedly become an invaluable
resource for activists the world over. But perhaps the most unique
feature of the book is its potential ability to link individuals and
organisations so they can maximise the impact of their campaigns. In the
rousing words of the author ‘you can and you will change the world’.
A child's frustrated wail of “There’s nothing good on TV!” is
heard within households throughout the nation – and between reality TV, violent
crime shows and profane music videos – parents tend to agree.
There is at least one program, however, which the whole
family can enjoy together, and more importantly – young kids can get educated
and inspired. Natural Heroes is a
showcase of people making positive environmental changes in our communities and
our world. Diverse independent filmmakers tell their stories of youth activism,
ocean conservation, environmental justice and many other topics that focus our
attention on the compassion and generosity of these Natural Heroes.
This season, as in seasons gone by, our very own Brower
Youth Award winners are featured as prominent heroes – and rightly so. They
hold their place among a plethora of other inspiring people, all working
towards effecting positive change.
So instead of endlessly channel-surfing or cringing at
inappropriate images – why not tune into Natural Heroes and think about what
you can do to make the world a better place.
.jpg)
