This fall, the New Leaders Initiative (that's us!) and Ashoka’s Youth Venture are proud to collaborate on a groundbreaking youth development effort in the East Bay. The program will support teams of young people to lead their own social ventures that support the critical theme of Food Justice, and build a powerful network of young changemakers across Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond.
Just Food will utilize a successfully tested model of supporting small, diverse youth teams that focus on solving critical food issues through investigation, imagination and action. These teams will undergo a rigorous 10 week curriculum to develop strong social venture models. The program will culminate in group presentations to a panel of community stakeholders for feedback and access to seed funding.
So, why Food Justice? Food Justice covers a broad range of issues connected to our food system and its impact on our communities. The breadth of the theme is intentional: to encourage young people to define their relationship to this issue and locate their unique position from which to act. Examples of food justice issues include: equitable access to local, healthy food; sustainable methods of obtaining and cultivating food; and the inclusion of communities of color into the critical dialogues on food policy.
And, what are Social Ventures? Social ventures are sustainable efforts focused on creating positive changes. Many are rooted in local communities, but have global impacts. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps. Supporting young people in developing social entrepreneurship ventures not only builds future leaders for global change, but it also helps to create the systems through which the world will begin changing - today- for the better.
This Friday, July 30th, we will be hosting "A Night to Benefit Just Food" at the Numi Tea Garden in Oakland! The event will feature inspiring words from two leaders of the Food Justice Movement: New York Times Best Selling Author Mollie Katzen, and award-winning Oakland food activist James Berk. It's going to a fun night, replete with plenty of excellent local foods and drinks. We hope to see you there!
The Great Power Race is a clean energy competition between students in China, India, and the United States. The aim is to kick-start hundreds of new climate solution projects on campuses and in communities in all three countries and to demonstrate to governments and businesses our generation's leadership in transforming our world towards a green economy.
Check out The Great Power Race to learn more and register your campus to take part today!
How do we get around? What impacts do our transportation systems have on the health of the planet, people, and economy? Over the past half-century, American development has largely embraced suburban sprawl, thereby making the personal automobile a near necessity. While other countries across Europe and Asia have charged full-speed ahead with high-speed rail and sophisticated public transit, America has puttered along, stuck idle in traffic.
The result? As President Obama said in his first Oval Office Address in June: "The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude."
For Daniel Jacobson, a Stanford undergrad and Richmond, CA native, the problems were clear enough - especially in nearby Oakland, where public health and the economy are stifled by a lack of transit and mobility. "I just wondered, what could Oakland do to turn things around?" Jacobson said. "What kind of project could Oakland have that would create economic development, that would reduce oil consumption, that would breathe new life into the city?" Over nine months, Jacobson compiled a 140-page report that addresses the feasibility and impact of a 2.5-mile streetcar line running through downtown. By Jacobson's estimates, the streetcar would spur the local economy by bringing in up to 24,000 new jobs, while decreasing the city's carbon footprint by up to 114,000 tons of CO2 annually. To many, the streetcar seems like the perfect way to get Oakland back on track and moving forward.
At a recent Tedx Event in Denver, Zakiya Harris, founder of Oakland's Grind for the Green, and Pandora Thomas, from San Francisco's Global Exchange, spoke about their vision for engaging young people of color with the growing environmental movement. Integrating their own experiences as educators and environmentalists, the two Bay Area activists shared their ideas for how to integrate popular culture and new media as a way of informing youth about issues of environmental justice, and how they can take action in their own communities. Watch their inspiring talk below, and be sure to check out Grind for the Green to learn more!
At a time when leadership and innovation are needed more than ever to mitigate our growing environmental crises - a need that has not been taken seriously by many of our elected officials - young people across the globe are not waiting to be "given" power to show that they have the power to affect positive change for the planet and their communities. Through the Brower Youth Awards, the Earth Island Institute has recognized dozens of young environmental leaders over the past decade - but we're not the only ones! Organizations such as Action for Nature offer their own prize for young environmental leaders, the International Eco-Hero Awards, which has worked since 2003 to "honor the work of young people between the ages of 8 and 16 who have done creative environmental projects."
Check out the 2010 Eco-Heroes to be inspired by the work of young individuals from the United States, India, Germany, Ivory Coast, and more!
