Man goes down to the forest and cuts down a tree and all the animals whispering in his ear while hes sleeping and he wakes up and he has an epiphany and he doesnt cut the tree down. And its about power for one person to do good or harm. Lending herer talent as an artist, lynn has devoted much of her recent work to climate change, even publishing a book specifically designed for children and parents. I think thahat my interest i the environment grew out of my love for nature. I had an experience when i was a little kid where i had these woods that i loved and i came pack and they were bulldozing it. They completely destroyeded it. It was a realllly traumatic experience and thats when i began thinkiking the adults don really k know what theyre thinking. I began to question. When i was first illustrating childrens books and i would go out and d i would talk to kids about the rain forest or about rivers or about endangered species, sometimes they get really upset. Sometimes they would c cry. And i realize this isnt really being very effective. I came to realize that if i shared with them success ststors of other kids and as im traveling around the country, there are so many kids coming up to me and saying we saved this tract of l land or we cleaned u our local river. These stories, these are really powerful. And i realize when kids are engaged like that, thats the gift i wanted to givive them. I wanted to show kids t that th had power. And d i could do that simply by sharing their stories, what t ty were doing. And sharing those stories effectively meant going beyond books to films that can easily be seen online. Her series, young voices for the planet, shows how young people can make a global ifference. Ill race you come back. Ets to the creek. We went down two hills. Do you hear that . Thats the broad shoulder hawk. Its really close. Do you want to go find it . Come on. Lets go this way. I love birds because theyre so interesting. They are beautiful. Theyey all have personalities. I think the reason that a lot of people have chosen birds as the symbol of the environment is because they h have a sensee of freedom. They can fly. Hey own the air. My dad has a family that lives on the coast of the gulf of mexico. Those beaches are beautiful. Or at least they were. The animals there were amazing. It was going back to them. And the brown pelicans. The gray her win who has heron who has become my best friend. She will swallow the fish headfirst. Catastrophihic disisaster at. A column of fire blasting into the sky. The explosion hapappened aboard momobile offshshore drilling un called the deep w water horiziz. More ththan 175 million gas of oil h have s spewed into the gulf. When i first heard about the oil spill, you know, it broke my heart. My dad a and my grandfather were talking. Olivia heard that it was spilling into the gulf. They were as angry as could be because they grew up loving those pristine beaches and t the wateters and seeeen those birds. After we spoke to my fatherinlaw, we had didinner d olivia, i had never seen her so upset. I started breaking down crying at the table and i coululdnt help it. Its the thought that was running through my head was its nesting season for the birds. What are we going to do . She knew immediately that the brown pelicans woululd be feedi their babies, that they would not leave their nests. I knew those birds were going to be affefected and some of th wont make it. Thinking about it, that whole night, i decided to write a letter. It was signed 11 years old and would like to help. The letter basically said i will do 500 drawings for people who donate, they would get drawings. And who most . Maybe ill raise 200. ll try. Ive drawn ever since i was a little girl and ever since i could hold a pencil. The donations started a couple of weeks after the explosion of the rig. The drawings were called for. It took me three months to finish them. [laughter] it was such a media whirlwind. First, it went to the mobile press register. Then it spread to the u. K. The e guardian u. K. Publisd an article saying g school sham b. P. From there, it went viral. And then it was going crazy. My mother was getting like 100 eemails an h hour. Belgian newspapers, italian tv. My mom was having a heart attack. People. 144 Million People have seen my story two months. 144 Million People. It tells you people love to help but they just dont know how. Thats why i think they need a role model like a youth that says even a child could do it, so could i. I could make a difference. Her illustrations are just beautiful. They really are. 11yearold girlrl. Whats really aststonishing is w that message that kids can make a differerence madee global big time. Andd that was so important. Yes, the 200,000 that cleaned off all those hundreds of birds, that was realllly grereat but a that kids now know w millions o kids now know that kids can make a big difference. Olivia encouraged us to meet with our representatives in washington, d. C. To advocate for alternative energy and the birds. We actually met with ken salazar. We should stop offshore drilling. Stop relying on other countries. Have you ever seen a solar panel break down and it ends the whole ecosystem and destroys the whole way of life for people and animals . Have you ever heard of a solar sill . You dont have to do whahat i d. But everything t that you do fo our planet helps. She just sees the big picture and she has the love for the birds. She understands that she has the power to maybe influence the way we allow o oil compapanies to pollute. And she knows that theres a bigger policy issues and that we need to support Renewable Energy legislativelely through congressional mandate. Ive always enjoyed living gn the brooook shirs bebecause i f it to be a very unique closeknit place to live. We have a very expensive vegetable garden. Weve been getting beef and pork from a lococal farmer. And we get our own eggs from our hickens. So in eighth grade, i saw what the H High School students s we doing with the e Student Initiative and i thohought it w fafantastic and i knew i wantedo be a part of it the second i got into high school. I firstst started working wi the food project my junior year. My friend, sophie randolph, graduated last year. She started the food initiativi wiwith zoe borden. We both felt that an issue was school lunches. If i have to eat pizza, i will. But i dont know. W. Itss never looked appealing g me. Im a vegetarian and they dont r really offer vegetarian options in the cav feara. We represesent the student body. Theyey want better lunches. I eat almost every day in the cafeteria. We saw a lot of processed foods in our lunches. It doesnt have as many nutrients as fresh foods. We get s served cut peaches in syrup but we have these amazing peaches that arere growing out here. We have great apples that grow actually right next to us on a Windy Hill Farm and were getting served apples in plastic bags thahat are presliced. Why not tap into our Natural Resources . That really started the discussion that i if it was eve fees tangible to the lunch area and everyone said yeah, we should do that. Its really hard for schools to change because there are all these rules like health code and in the school cafeteria. People are really up against the wall. But these kids were able to figure out a way that they could basically providede a lunch for the students for almost the same price. We planned a local lunch pilot day. June has this phenomenal personality and we thought thth instead of using canned vevegetables, we shouldd supply locacal vegetables arere sautee squash, onions, garlic, cheese. Yep. The lurch was fantastic. And lunch was fantastic and people really loved it. Our cafeteria purchases through cisco, which in turn gets theheir food from other sources. Who knows where . Shipping t this food all around this world to get into our cafeteria creates a huge amount of c. O. 2. A main contributor of global warming. For example, locally grown apple travels 61 miles whereas conventionally sourced apples trtravel 1,726 miles. So, you can see how much carbon thats really creating. Its a lot of carbon. We all really care about decreasing our carbon footprini which we live in its such a beautiful someplace and we want to preserve that. Project sprout was started five years ago by three student who is decided that they wanted more local and fresh vegegetables fr the cafeteria. Here i is our greenhousee and h we grow radishs and lettuce during the winter. Other root vegetables that go up through the cafeteria. Carrots, spinach, tomatatoes. People come out o on saturda where theres kids from the school or people around the community. We weed the garden, plant the garden, harvest. That food in turn, gets seserved in the cav feara. They bring in lunches from the local garden, like fresh veggies and food. So thats kind of nice. One of our main problems at project sprout is our main grgrowing season is in the summ whwhen school is not t in sessi. So weve been working with the coooop opt to toto creata bartering systetem. They will sell that produc anand in the susummer, when the need it in return, well simply give thehem that product in exchangege. Once we had the pilot l lunc under or belt, we were granted one day a month that we could otally take over the menu. Pressure food will have more nutrients and kids will have ore energy during the day. Kids can be engaged, they can do meaningful work in what is that other kids s cant possssi one of f the main concerns a food that Food Services s ha was they didnt t have enougugh staff. You have to preparare freshh fo. Yoyou cant just unfreezeze it. You cant just take it out of a can. So it was more work and so thats where we step in and so i we will help with the extra work. We have students in the cafeteria mixing afafter codeos teachers cutting vegetables. But they were concerned we werennt food safe certrtified we said we will get food safe certified. Charlie e and i went to a ninehour seminar. We went what temperatures foods need to be cooked at. How to avoidid contatamination. We all passed with flying colors and received ouour creditit accucusation. Certification. We planned a rotating schedule so each one of us can plan without a local chef each month. In october, i worked with brbrian to get the red line. I went to thee red line inn and we worked out menu. The red line ordereded a p p wiwinninsteer from the local fair. And brian said we want to use it for the local meatltloaf. And hee had all the local farms delivered to him and he got all of it and delivered to us and he cookeked it with h us students also helped out and it was a good day. Not only was our meatloaf grassfed, it t was a realally t opportunity for us to show students whehere our food is cocoming frorom. We realize that local food day every month was a a big process. We want to momove of it the Student Hands into the cafeteria hands because that would be a way tah make it longlasting. G. S so were aiming g toward tt a local l few items in ouour lus a few times a week. We purchased m more from loc farms anand local Grocery Store than obvbvioly. That gives them some business and increase their local economy and i think thats a great goal to work towards. Our generation, wear the ones that will going to have to be the e problem sololver for tomo. And why not start h here and reducece our Carbon Footprint a buy creatively . And that was creatively. This is not in the movie because since after the movie wasas don they s started a store in their school. So they make food from all local ingredients and they its part of the business course at the school. And theyre providing fresh local organic a lotot of vegetatarian food for thee studs all day. They to come by and have really good food. Because the sea level change, miami, out of all the cities in the world will have the greatest economic loss. At a certain point, is there anything we can do . E have to start thinking that. Were the green team melissa, maddie, m melissa a nicole wanted to go bebeyond th classrsroom w with what t they learned about energygy and enviroronmental sciee andnd maka difference in their school and community. We ststarted by turning off computers. Recycle. Tururn off lights. We weather stripped the doors and windows so the air cant escacape so consnserve airconditioning. We turned off the abobout uns d o opened the windows and doors. Thehere are so manyny Little Things that you can dodo thahatl sasave energy and money. Y. We have the green thermometer. We received energy that we were savingng. I it became a nonprofit scho thatat reduce ouour carbon n foototprint. We saved tens of thousands of dollars. We learned how our actioion affected the environment. Were able to vastly decreree the amouount of energy our scho useded. Goingng grereen is a w winw situtuation for everyrybody. My eighth h grade yearar, we e 39,000. And then the year aftfter that,e saved another 14,000. We made a presentation for schohool Board Members abobout the enentire district could d b more envnvironmentally friendld. And they also saw the financncial benefits of going green. The savings were astronomical. Itit was exciting to go to scho Board Members. You u could say look, you have idea how much money you could be savingng. Whats really interesting ababout this storyry, i think, that it t didnt just stop ther nicoles father owned buildings in miami. And at first, he was not supportive of what they were doing. Then, when they saved 53,000, he went out and he exchanged the airconditioning units in his builildings for energy storere. And he saved a lot of money, thousands of dollars. And so, not only didid thosee gs affect their school, they ended up helping their parents save money and their Community Save money and the businesseses save money. So y you can see how what kids n do can cascade down through a communitity and really, make a huge difference. Small changes that add up to big savings. You can save milillions of dollarars and this is just one small coununty i in florida. Can you imaginene if any other cocounty did this . Can youu imagine if every othth state did this . Its right on evevery level. If yoyou keep trying,g, you t lose. Youre saving money and more importantly, youre saving the planetet. Kids do have power. Kids have a say in what happens. I felt like i could change things. Could strap on my apabilities. M m name e felix. Im 11 years old from m germany. Two years ago, after the warm weather, m my teacher ask me to give a presentation a about the climate crisis. S. F felix came e home and said, i have to make a powower firm presesentation nextt week. I said but you need to do t tha i have no idea how tdo thahat. Finally, he worked out by himself. He was reseaearching on the internet and he learned abobout i found out that this man planteted 30 Million Trees in africaca i in 30 years. So i t thought if he can plant million n trees, we students in germancan alslso plant one millllion trees. This is the first tree we have planted. Its an apple tree. This tree was that size when we planted it two years ago. Each tree that we plant takes up 10 kilos of co2 every year. And each tree is s symbol for climate justice. Weve already d done six p plant the acacademy. At the academy, there are scientists giviving presentatio, sometimes im giving presentationons. My presentation is about climate justice. Client justice means that t eve person in the world is allowed to pollute the air with two tons of cararbon. Now as of today, in the u. S. America pollutes the airr with 0 tons of carbon a year, an avage german or european, 10 ons o of carbon a year. And africa, a halff a t ton. Today, im working together with thousands of other students in germany and many other countries to plant one Million Trees in ach country. Were learning about different kinds of trtrees. Were here in the forest and were planting some trees to help climate change. We have already planted 29 0,000 trees in germany. And 55050,000 trees are already pledged. There are adults and politicians that c changed how to talk and really understood what i talked about. He knows that children can do something. They can change a lot. And they can make a difference. [applause] if the adults dont do enoughgh, we have to do it becae we wilill live on earth for another 80 or 90 yearsrs. And our children will live even longer. Felix really cares about future generations. And at the end of the movie, of all the movies, this is the one that where tears flow because et is when he sits there in the woods in this beautiful forest and he says that if the adults arent g going to do something, then we have to do it. Then it just hits you. It really gets to y your hearar all the e young people who i filmeded possess a huguge sense compassion for the rest of the world and empathy. So, they have the ability to think beyond themselves and their own personal wants and needs and they have a sense of themselves in a continuum that its not just were here now, but there are generations to come. And so, each ending is very its sort of turning it over to the audience and saying now, you can make a difference. Yes, we made a difference, but you can make a difference. So, for instance, in olivias oil spill, at the end, she says you dont have to do what i did, but whatever you do counts. And alex says kids have power. So at the end of each movie, thats the end of the message is that kids have power and kids can make a difference. Captioned by the National Captioning Institute www. Ncicap. Org
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