Generation next
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 3 » The goods » Generation nextIf you’re looking for a person with passion, drive, commitment and energy, talk to your nearest teenager. Don’t believe us? Jinty MacTavish talked to Aotearoa’s greenest teens about what gets them fired up, and how you can nurture your own teen’s world-changing abilities
Photograph by Daniel Allen
It was the haka on the final night that got me. Hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and my eyesight got distinctly blurry. Twenty teenage faces eyeballed us from the other end of the hall, ‘Ka Mate’ blazing a fierce trail between us. These kids were going home buzzing.
In its second year, Enviroschools Youth Jam brought together more than 180 of Aotearoa’s secondary students to jam ideas around sustainability in a three-day event at Rotorua’s Keswick Camp. After three full-on days, young people headed back home armed with new ideas, skills and the energy to effect change in their schools and communities.
So how did Enviroschools manage to get teens so engaged in the idea of a sustainable Aotearoa? I asked some of the participants what keeps their passion for sustainability ticking, and how grown-ups can help keep their green machine well-oiled.
Eco-friendly
For a young person, everything is better when shared with friends, including passion for the environment.
Nelson’s Green Teens attribute much of their success to their friendship. Pictured above, left to right, are Abby Ward, Brittany Packer and Sophie Turner, three teens who have left few stones unturned in their quest to achieve a 20 percent reduction in Nelson’s plastic bag use by 2009. They’ve lobbied local government, run eco-bag competitions and exhibitions, talked to primary schools, held information sessions at markets and festivals, and worked with local supermarkets to develop anti-plastic publicity schemes. A recent Green Teens-facilitated Eco Bag Month slashed plastic turnover at Countdown and Woolworths by a whopping 48,000 bags.
“We thought it would be a small project,” laughs Brittany. “But that was before we realised how hard it is to change people’s attitudes!”
What drives them? All three girls speak of families with strong environmental ethics, but their real catalyst was the United Nations 2005 Children’s Summit for the Environment in Japan. Brittany and Sophie both attended, and for the first time were surrounded by like-minded peers—600 of them, from 65 different countries. Returning to New Zealand bursting with inspiration, they teamed up with Abby to launch their Plastic—Not So Fantastic campaign. “Us three, we complement each other,” says Sophie. “We bounce ideas off each other, and if there’s a setback, at least one of us will be able to see a bright side.”
Diversify
The way organiser Te Rawhitiroa Bosch sees it, Youth Jam represents a true community, with interactions across year levels and generations, and between schools and community groups. It’s everything secondary schooling could be.
“Too often it can be like a monoculture in schools—we need to support more connection and the growth of diversity. There could be a lot more integration across subject areas too, more cross-curricula flow,” he says. When teens are encouraged to play an active role in the wider community, they have a real sense of purpose and begin to appreciate the power they have to effect change.
At Raglan Area School, skilled community members help students develop real-life sustainability projects, incorporating them into the curriculum. James Kingi Campbell’s horticulture class project is to rid the school’s native bush of all noxious weeds. He grins a bit sheepishly at a photo of himself, whacking the crap out of a creeper. “We even go in to school when we don’t have to—this photo was taken in the holidays.”
Over in the technology lab, another group of students is hard at work planning and constructing a gazebo to house a compost bin, worm farm, and a recycling station. Smaller recycling stations, designed and constructed by the technology class and painted by community volunteers, are dotted over the school grounds.
Enviroschools Youth Jam, Rotorua. Photographs by Briar Hardy-Hesson
Get experienced
As 86 percent of us now live in urban areas, it’s hardly surprising that some Kiwi teens struggle to relate their everyday lives to environmental degradation. Jenny Lynch, an officer with Forest and Bird’s Kiwi Conservation Club (KCC), feels that giving kids the opportunity to fall in love with our landscapes and creatures is essential in moving towards a sustainable Aotearoa.
“Parents these days often don’t have the time or the knowledge to get their kids out there, and we’re very shut off from natural landscapes in urban areas. KCC is about kids developing closeness with the environment.”
Taking experiential learning to the extreme, Susan Smirk was one of three Otago Girls’ High School students who won the 2007 Freemasons Big Science Adventures and, with it, a trip to Greenland. Although she’d made a film about climate change to get to the final round of the competition, looking back now Susan doesn’t really feel she had a very deep understanding of the problem.
Visiting Greenland put it all in perspective. She saw retreating glaciers and abandoned villages—signs of the impact of climate change on the Inuit’s traditional lifestyle. Susan returned to become Earth Hour’s Youth Ambassador, a role that saw her making a low-carbon pilgrimage from Dunedin to Christchurch, talking to primary schools and local government officials on the way.
“For me, engagement with the climate change issue happened when I saw its human impact. That’s the difference between book knowledge and experiential knowledge. Emotional engagement leads to lifestyle change.”
It’s you, too
As much as teens would like to think they’re independent thinkers, research shows they’re constantly picking up cultural norms by osmosis. If your family separates compost from rubbish, it’s likely your kids will keep doing it later in life. But it’s not just your actions they’re taking on board: your attitude is infectious, too.
Former ‘anti-enviro kid’ Erana Walker credits her teacher, Joanne Murray, with changing her attitude. In 2003, Jo marched 200 pupils from Whangarei’s Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Rawhiti Roa to the nearby Waitaua River to show them why and how the water was being polluted. “We got in there, got our feet wet, and tested the water. The theory stuff can be boring, but getting in there and doing it, that’s what got me interested,” says Erana. “Whaea Jo is so enthusiastic about stuff, it’s impossible not to join in.”
Working with empowered teens is inspiring for adults, too. Te Rawhitiroa and the Enviroschools team are already planning future Youth Jams.
“Our young people are searching for connectedness—for people and projects to connect to, passions to connect with,” says Te Rawhitiroa. “Once young people realise their power to bring about change, and become reconnected with their communities and environment, the only possible outcome is an Aotearoa full of sustainable communities.”
Help cultivate your own dream green teen
Pre-teens
Get started early. Sign up your kids for the Kiwi Conservation Club and take them on outings with local conservation groups, or on camping holidays.
Within the school
- Look for schools that have strong sustainability ethics.
- Approach your school Boards of Trustees to move towards cross-curricula learning, incorporating Education for Sustainability into multiple subject areas, or join Enviroschools.
- Help your teen’s school to foster relationships across generations, across cultures and between groups in your community.
Extra-curricula
- Encourage your teen to attend events that bring ‘green teens’ together, and take them to places where they can learn more about the environment and other cultures.
- Encourage your teen to join clubs and activities that will support their interest in sustainability, particularly those that involve getting out into the environment with friends.
- When it’s impossible for your teen to have an in situ experience, introduce them to films and books that will help them experience it virtually.
At home
- Support your teen’s ideas and let them ‘own’ their projects.
- Accept all input and embrace creativity.
- Create interactive opportunities to share your passion for the environment. In Erana’s words, “Take your students out in the pouring rain and show them the pollution, but do it with passion!”
- Live as sustainably as you can, and practise what you preach.
- Know that, even when it seems as if your efforts are amounting to nothing, they’ll be storing your gems for a time when they can revisit them without breaking the teen law of not listening to parents.
