How the EYA Started
By Jeff Gibbs
Five years ago I went on a high school trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands off the north coast of British Columbia. I was impressed by the old growth forests and saw, for the first time, a world where nature, not man, predominated. I also saw enormous areas of clear cut forest that were rapidly encroaching on the fragile wilderness. I wasn't a public speaker, but what I saw forced me to act. My friends and I got together and formed an environmental club in my high school called the TREE Club (Teenager Response to Endangered Ecosystems).
Our battle to help save the South Moresby area in the Queen Charlotte Islands showed me the power young people can hold in the environmental movement (please see David Suzuki's article). Through this campaign, I met Dr. David Suzuki who I later joined on an expedition into the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. This expedition and a more recent one to Borneo in Southeast Asia, exposed me to the crisis befalling all rainforests and the people living within them.
While doing a series of slide show lectures in high schools back in Canada, I was amazed at the large numbers of schools that already had environment clubs or were in the process of beginning one. During this lecture tour, many students approached me to find out ways to get involved in the struggle to save our planet. The challenge was to unite this energy, expand upon it and use it to create changes that will secure a healthy environment for the future, OUR future.
During October of this past year, many concerned students gathered at an environment conference in Nelson B.C. There I spoke of the need to unite our energies. The response was overwhelming, and the EYA was born.
In response to Dr. David Suzuki's national newspaper articles, the EYA received over 500 letters from school clubs and individuals wanting to join up. It is obvious from the mail and telephone calls that the youth of Canada have enormous respect for Dr. Suzuki. His wisdom, frankness and commitment to environmental issues is desperately welcomed. While most politicians and leaders talk environmental rhetoric, Dr. Suzuki is the older statesman with a long term vision for this country and the world. He challenges us to rethink our relationship with nature and his logic inspires us to act on its behalf. He has helped launch the EYA and we are grateful.
ALLIANCE ENCOURAGES YOUTH TO JOIN THE FIGHT
Canada Wide Youth Alliance grows to 15,000 members in two months!
By David Suzuki,
Southam News Syndicate Nov. 18,1989 Reprinted with permission of the author
The 1990s have been designated the "Turnaround Decade" in our fight to preserve a now fragile biosphere.
And who has most at stake in what happens during those 10 years? Not politicians nor businessmen, but today's young people. What adults do or don't do now will determine the kind of world teenagers will reach maturity in.
In October, I spoke to students in a Toronto high school. I bluntly described the beleaguered state of the planet and the horrors that lie ahead if we don't change. Then I challenged them.
The worst scenario can be avoided, but only with a massive effort by all of us. Teenagers have to modify their ideas about the importance of cars, clothing and consumer items. They have to find out from their teachers in history, science, civics, ecology, geography and sociology how we created the environmental crisis and what options we have. Parents of every student are important. Some of them are politicians, doctors, lawyers, business people, laborers and homemakers. And because they love their children more than anything else in the world, those moms and dads must change and those students have to convince them. The students responded powerfully with a will to act - their future is at stake, they're idealistic and they haven’t invested in the status quo. They can change the world.
In October, Jeff Gibbs, a 22 year old student at the University of British Columbia, established the Environmental Youth Alliance to link high school environmental groups. For more information, send a self addressed stamped envelope to the EYA, PO box 29031, 1996 West Broadway, Vancouver B.C., V6J 5C2.
The alliance will connect groups through a newspaper featuring stories written by students and invited experts, allowing teenagers to communicate with each other, share ideas and give each other support. It will also sponsor gatherings at environmental conferences held for young people and is arranging trips to wilderness areas so teens can build new friendship, learn about ecology and meet native elders and naturalists.
David Suzuki
Teachers have expressed a lot of interest on the alliance, but the group is determined that youth will control the organization, raise money, set the agenda and control the spending. In other words, the kids will run it.
Jeff's own story is an advertisement for the alliance.
Raised as a city boy, at 15 he experienced a fundamental shift in perception while on a canoe trip through the Bowron lakes in central B.C.
"Until then," he said, "I always thought human beings were at the top of the heap. But out there, I was overwhelmed with the power of nature and how puny I was."
The next year, in 1984, that spiritual revelation took him to the Queen Charlotte Islands, where "I realized that nature is incredibly complex and runs on its own agenda. If humans weren't there, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. I was blown away by the power, the mystery and the beauty of it all."
When a battle broke out over proposed logging on Meares Island off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Jeff started an environmental group called the TREE Club (Teenagers' Response to Endangered Ecosystems) in his school.
About 30 students got involved and the first thing they did was to get the names of every elected member of the federal and provincial governments. Each student chose about 20 names and wrote a personal letter by hand citing statistics and asking them to save the forest. Replies, including one from the Prime Minister, began to pour into the school. The students were able to tally those for and against logging Meares and focused on the undecideds.
Later, the youngsters ordered 3,000 buttons to Save South Moresby, a contentious area in the Queen Charlotte Islands. The buttons cost 20 cents apiece and were sold for $1. Money was sent in to supplement what was raised by bake sales and car washes, in all about $7,000. The TREE Club gave some of the money to the Western Canada Wilderness Committee to print 50,000 newspapers about South Moresby and the students then helped to hand deliver them.
Involvement empowered the students.
The TREE Club organized a slide show, which they showed to schoolmates, parents, and the general public. And it made more money.
For two months, club members went out twice a week and knocked on doors to talk to people about the future of South Moresby. They covered over 5,000 households.
This is power at the grassroots. The alliance will link high school groups across Canada and encourage students to get involved by forming their own Environmental clubs.
After all, it is their world.
