The March 2024 Eco-Justice Collaborative newsletter featured a story from students at George School in Newtown, PA, who are leaders of the school’s Climate Action Club. The mission of the club is to “promote faithful stewardship of the earth,” and it serves a crucial role in educating students and faculty about pressing environmental and social issues as well as encouraging youth activism. The club is composed of 9-12th grade students from all parts of the globe who are passionate about enacting change.
Hi everyone! We are Noori Nagra ‘25 and Alice Morrison ‘24, George School’s 23/24 Climate Action Club Leaders. To begin this piece, we would like to highlight two of our initiatives through the perspective of club members Lexi Matson ‘25 and Aïcha Dabo ’24:
Club Sponsored Assembly (Winter 2024): “Over the years, I’ve had a lot of fun with Climate Change Club and have made a lot of special memories, but by far my favorite is when we were able to get guest speaker, Linda Villarosa, to talk about environmental racism at my school assembly. How the talk was run was more conversational/interview based with my fellow club members and I had the privilege of asking her questions about environmental racism. While meeting and talking with Linda Villarosa, I learned a lot more about her relationship with environmental racism, her definition of environmental racism, and how my peers and I can advocate and combat issues of inequity in both the environment and healthcare. I had a lot of fun talking with Linda and advocating for an issue we don’t tend to hear in the media a lot. This was an experience that I truly value and if given the opportunity again I would take it in a heartbeat.” (Lexi Matson ‘25)
Sustainable Prom Dress Sale (Winter 2024): “The sustainable prom initiative is an effort from the club to reduce clothing waste on campus. A slideshow was sent out to the community with pictures of formal wear sent in by other students for rent or purchase. I think that the sustainable prom initiative is a great idea! I love how it connects the community and makes formal wear accessible for last minute purchases. Events like dances create a lot of clothing waste, but by having this initiative, it lessens the amount of waste that is created through events such as prom and winter formal.” (Aïcha Dabo ‘24)
In addition to these two events, Climate Action Club has hosted numerous other impactful initiatives throughout the past few years to increase awareness and action within our community.
As club leaders of Climate Action Club, we were invited to be a part of the Environmental Stewardship Oversight Committee, a board made up of teachers, faculty, and administration from the community. Being part of this committee helped us to enact even larger changes, such as collaborating with the physical plant to change our recycling system to single stream. To create this change, our club spent many weeks surveying the current system and proposed ways to improve it. As a result of this survey completed by our club, entering the 2024 school year the entire system has changed to single-stream recycling and we are seeing significant improvements in our campus waste. The ESOC also hosts the biannual Green Initiative contest where $10,000 is awarded to bring a student’s environmental idea to life. The three winners in 2023 were a Bioswale on campus, more energy efficient fans in Bancroft, and a phone charging exercise bike for the gym. This event further leads to a greater sense of environmental consciousness within our school and allows us to make direct impactful alterations on our campus in an effort to protect and honor our environment.
Another important milestone for Climate Action Club is our annual weekend in which we create a full weekend of environmental activities and events in an effort to engage our community. Last year, notable events we hosted included a flea market for all students to promote sustainable shopping, tree planting on our school campus, and painting with sustainable watercolor paint from flowers. This year, we are currently in the process of planning our next weekend and our club is collaborating to produce the same exciting events.
As mentioned above, every year we get the opportunity in assembly to speak to our entire community about an issue that is relevant to environmental justice/climate action. This year, we had the honor of bringing in guest speaker Linda Villarosa and last year, we used our assembly slot to promote sustainable actions students can enact in their daily lives.
Promoting sustainability within our school community is at the forefront of our agenda as a club, and we aim to regularly provide students with simple ways they can reduce their environmental impact. One such way is the sustainable prom dress drive mentioned above and another way is through encouraging the use of the Big Green Box, a previous Green Initiative Contest winner, that stores batteries and electronics to be sent to special recycling centers. Lastly, we have hosted letter-writing campaigns, writing letters to local politicians to encourage them to prioritize environmental policy and sustainable legislature. For example, last year, we wrote to politicians urging them to enact bans on plastic bags. Through these different events, we hope that we can create a small, yet impactful change that will ensure we are doing our part in protecting our environment.
Along with these more focused actions, a more large-scale point of action for our club throughout the recent years has been participating in the Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) “Never Vanguard” protest in which we hope to be a part of the fight against Vanguard’s harmful investments into oil and gas industries. We have attended about 3 protests, all in Malvern Pennsylvania (location of Vanguard headquarters), in which we listened to affected voices discuss the issue and rallied with those around us to create change to the investments of Vanguard.
Overall, this club has provided us and other members with the opportunity to collaborate on environmental issues that we are passionate about and create long lasting change in our immediate community and beyond. We hope that wherever you are in the world, you feel motivated and empowered to join with those around you and create a similar group to promote similar change.
If you are interested and want to see more of our Climate Action Club, follow our Instagram: @gs_climate_action