EJxYouth Summit
Event Details
Environmental Justice x Youth Summit
This online, youth-led event live-streams a diverse range of speakers to share resources on youth organizing in environmental and social justice movements. Hosted by GreenRoots’ Environmental Chelsea Organizers (ECO) and the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI).
We’ll hear talks from leading youth organizers like DAYUM (Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan) and Jeremy Ornstein and Sam Dreyfus of the Sunrise Movement, and discuss the importance and contributions of youth in social justice spaces.
This is an open online event for young people as well as community organizers, practitioners and researchers of all ages working at the front lines of environmental justice, data justice, and other social justice struggles. All are welcome.
We hope that the EJxYouth Summit becomes a welcoming and accepting space where youth can gather and discuss issues of climate, food, environmental and social justice, and the challenges they face as youth organizers in these movements. So we can collaboratively direct the shape of our futures, it’s important for youth to have spaces where we can share and support each other in the important work we are doing.
Building on the principles of environmental justice, this event defines the environment broadly to include urban spaces and issues of community conditions shaping life and public well-being, in addition to important questions of pollution.
Background:
This event builds on the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) event “Environmental Data Justice: Vision and Values,” during which we discussed the importance of youth voices in contemporary justice movements. At that event, the Environmental Chelsea Organizers (ECO) presented the project Chemicals in the Creek, which used glowing lanterns to represent the 76 Clean Water Act violations committed between 2013 and 2017 by oil storage facilities along the city’s creek. ECO decided to host the EJxYouth Summit in collaboration with EDGI to bring together youth working on environmental and social justice projects.
About ECO:
The Environmental Chelsea Organizers (ECO) is a group of 6 teens that work on projects important to youth in their town Chelsea (MA) as part of the nonprofit organization GreenRoots. GreenRoots has been working for environmental justice and improved quality of life in Chelsea for the past 25 years. GreenRoots values the leadership development and empowerment of ECO members, who lead campaigns for the full implementation of the youth pass pilot program; community-wide surveys to document health and displacement concerns; advocacy and design for teen parks; tree planting projects; expansion of peer teaching initiatives in public and private after school programs; and other campaigns envisioned by youth.
About EDGI:
The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) is a network of academics, practitioners, and nonprofits addressing potential threats to United States federal environmental and energy policy, and to the scientific research infrastructure built to investigate, inform, and enforce them. EDGI is a distributed collaboration operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the non-profit, Public Lab, with volunteer members across North America.
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