America’s Teens Turning Green

Teens Turning Green traces its ori­gins to a pro­gram being run by Judi Shils some years ago. “The offi­cial jour­ney started in 2002 when I founded Search for the Cause,” Judi told Organic Connections. “Marin County had the high­est breast can­cer rates in the coun­try, and they had risen 60 per­cent in eight years. I mounted a door-to-door cam­paign, in which a cou­ple of thou­sand vol­un­teers went to about 65,000 house­holds on a day in October. It was quite suc­cess­ful. Following that cam­paign, Senator Barbara Boxer brought together a whole col­lec­tive of peo­ple doing research work, and a lot has hap­pened to change the lay of the land since then.”

But another aspect of the cam­paign really struck Judi. “Probably 25 per­cent of the vol­un­teers going door to door were high school stu­dents,” she recalled. “They came back at the end of the day sim­ply know­ing that they had made a dif­fer­ence in their world, and really enthused that they could, even though they were ‘just teenagers’ and couldn’t vote. So, fol­low­ing that, in late 2004 and early 2005 my daugh­ter and I founded Teens Turning Green, really as a way to mobi­lize youth to action and to empower them to use their voices for the greater good. We wanted them to know that even though they weren’t empow­ered to pull the levers on vot­ing day, their voices were all-powerful: teach­ers lis­tened, par­ents lis­tened and leg­is­la­tors listened.”

At age 13, Erin was a co-founder and leader of Teens Turning Green. Despite her age, it seemed totally nat­ural. “For me, green is and always has been the norm,” she said. “I was raised in the eco-bubble of Northern California with a mother who made con­scious deci­sions across the boards from day one. Working on green ini­tia­tives was a nat­ural exten­sion of my life: my beliefs, my actions and my pas­sions. I love what I do and I do what I love, and it all revolves around ensur­ing a healthy, sus­tain­able, just planet for my gen­er­a­tion and many more to come.”

In lead­er­ship posi­tions, mother and daugh­ter formed a unique sym­bio­sis that con­tin­ues to this day. “I’m the dreamer and I come up with ideas,” Judi said. “My daugh­ter is the strate­gic ground­ing mind; she’s a bril­liant writer, thinker and strate­gist. We’re a per­fect team; she’s every­thing I’m not and prob­a­bly vice versa.”

“My mom and I are a bril­liant duo, truly,” Erin added. “She hatches crazy, seem­ingly impos­si­ble ideas—and I focus them to be pow­er­ful, rel­e­vant and achiev­able. That is the behind-the-scenes idea cre­ation and plan­ning that hap­pens around the clock. We com­ple­ment each other in the best of ways.”

Today, cam­paigns are launched through a com­bi­na­tion of out­reach from Teens Turning Green per­son­nel, and young peo­ple com­ing to the web­site and find­ing a cause that speaks to them per­son­ally from the many projects listed there. But there are major pro­grams that all par­tic­i­pate in—and Project Green Challenge is one Judi is most proud of. “We launched some­thing called Project Green Challenge last October, which we’re doing again this October,” Judi related. “It’s actu­ally the coolest project we’ve ever done. It was a 30-day chal­lenge dur­ing the month of October, and it is for high school and col­lege stu­dents. Every sin­gle day it was a dif­fer­ent theme—body, food, sus­tain­able ag, or one of 30 other dif­fer­ent themes. Each of the themes had four chal­lenges: green, greener, green­est and extra credit. Students were invited to dive as deeply as they wanted and to really learn that theme—apply it to their own lives, then take that infor­ma­tion and spread it. A lot of teach­ers also inte­grated the chal­lenges into their curriculums.”

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“Through Project Green Challenge, we truly got to see the impact of our TTG pro­grams,” Erin said. “Seven years of work were jam­packed into the 30-day chal­lenge! The stu­dents took it all in at so many lev­els; kids care, lis­ten and want more.”

In addi­tion to set­ting the stage for the next Project Green Challenge, along with run­ning many other projects, Teens Turning Green is also focus­ing on California’s vital ini­tia­tive to label GMO foods. “The impe­tus for our Right to Know College Road Tour was the California Right to Know bal­lot ini­tia­tive to label GMO food,” Judi explained. “In order for it to hit the bal­lot in November, 650,000 sig­na­tures have to be gath­ered. We’re going to 10 schools, and the goal is to really engage kids in the right to know in general—what’s in your food, what’s in your products.”

For Teens Turning Green, the only way for­ward is up—as mother and daugh­ter pur­sue the paths that they love more than any­thing. “It’s the fire that lives in me,” said Judi. “I so yearn to watch their faces to see what the spark will be that makes their eyes just light up. Then you know they’re there and you know they’re going to keep on mak­ing this jour­ney, what­ever that looks like.”

“This is my life,” Erin con­cluded. “To see the power of young people—finding their voices, becom­ing edu­cated about rel­e­vant issues, stand­ing up for some­thing that they believe in, tak­ing con­crete action, and spread­ing the word—is remark­able. From our kitchen table to thou­sands of pas­sion­ate, active young change-makers, it’s been incredible—and the jour­ney has only just begun.”

For more infor­ma­tion on Teens Turning Green, and the lat­est on their many projects, please visit www.teensturninggreen.org.