Kids for a greener world - Urban Forests: The Youth Summit

American Forests, May-June, 1993 by Barbara Keeler

Feeling hopeless about the state of the environment? Check out the energy of the 1,000 young people who will gather in July in Cincinnati.

No doubt you've heard it said that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but rather borrow it from our children. But "borrow" implies that children were consulted before the loan was made. Many of them say they're not content to settle for a fraction of the natural resources adults have borrowed, with interest paid in the form of pollution, waste, and crowding.

To put it another way: kids can't play soccer underground. Playing soccer may sound like a far cry from environmental correctness, but that thought--spawned by a discussion of an uninhabitable earth--led first to the formation of an activist youth group and later to the first by-kids, for-kids National Youth Environmental Summit.

The Summit, with the theme Partners for the Planet Branching Out, will be held July 16-18 at the Cincinnati convention center. Planned and conducted by boys and girls 10 to 18, the Summit will connect, educate, and empower 1,000 young environmentalists who wish to preserve the principal on their "loan."

A year in the planning, the Summit will also launch a program, called Trees Across America (TAA), in which youth groups initiate projects such as tree planting, recycling, and backyard composting.

As a condition of attendance, all Summit participants must sign pledges to start TAA projects in the environmental field of their choice. At the conference, participants will attend a series of workshops related to their TAA project. The workshops, covering environmental topics ranging from forest and endangered-species preservation to pollution control, will be conducted by kids, some with adult partners.

This is a meeting about looking forward, not looking back. "The purpose of this summit is to seek solutions and implementation, not to sit in judgment of others involved... No pointing fingers," the co-chairperson says.

Tara Church, now 14, was one of the Brownies who listened in 1987 as a discussion of the long-term effects of disposable dishes led to leaders describing a group researching options for underground living quarters after the earth became uninhabitable. Moved to action, the El Segundo, California, troop planted a sycamore--Marcie the Marvelous Tree--on city property.

"After the planting, I thought about Marcie, how big she'd grow, and how much good that one tree could do in the future," Tara says. "Realizing how much one individual could accomplish by planting one tree gave me a sense of power I didn't have before. I had realized how much I cared about the environment, but I didn't feel my individual efforts could make a difference until that moment."

She and other troop members went on to form Tree Musketeers, enlisting boys and girls of all ages in their efforts. Eventually they would put a border of trees between their hometown and a nearby airport and find homes for thousands of seedlings. They wrote the city council to request the reinstatement of Arbor Day and established El Segundo's first recycling center.

In 1991, Tree Musketeers was the only youth group on the Steering Committee for the Fifth National Urban Forestry Conference, convened in Los Angeles that fall. Tara says she thought then how nice it would be "to have a summit of our own, just for kids."

She made that wish in the presence of a U.S. Forest Service rep, Robert Conrad, who took the idea back to Washington. The Forest Service provided Tree Musketeers with a grant to organize the Summit. Tara and fellow Tree Musketeer Tammy Smith, also 14, act as co-chairs. Additional funding came from the National Association of State Foresters and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The steering committee for the Summit includes representatives from 11 youth groups around the country--from neighborhood projects to multinational agencies. The reps are supported by hardworking adult partners, some from the youth organizations and others from adult groups.

Also represented on the committee are youth groups created and run by adults to empower youth and allow them to take action on behalf of the environment. Several youth forestry groups are represented as well.

"This Summit gives me a sense of hope that someday we won't be living inside and walking from skyscraper to skyscraper," says Mason Poe, 16, the representative for Kids For A Clean Environment (Kids F.A.C.E.).

Kids F.A.C.E. was started by Mason's sister Melissa, who in 1989 saw a television show that depicted a future in which people wore gas masks to go outside.

"I was really scared, and I wanted somebody to fix it for me," says Melissa, then nine years old. "At that time I didn't think I could do much by myself, so I wrote to the President. I thought he could just fix it. That isn't how it turned out."

By the time President Bush's answer arrived 12 weeks later, Melissa had already begun calling advertising agencies. Soon thereafter her letter pleaded eloquently from 250 billboards nationwide.