We're training the next generation of environmental leaders
I spent this afternoon in the company of 11 talented young people running a public speaking workshop. They are all students enrolled in our semester-long training program, the Greenpeace Organizing Term (GOT). The GOT is a semester program aimed at empowering and training students to become enviornmental leaders.
They are only only halfway through their second week with us and I'm impressed by how much they've learned already: they wrote and presented articulate, impassioned speeches urging each other to join the global warming fight.
In their first ten days with us, the students have already been through trainings in messaging, recruitment, facilitation and campaign strategy. They've also heard briefings from our seasoned campaigners on Oceans, Toxics and Global Warming. Their first weekend was spent together on a retreat getting to know each other and building a team that will take on vital environmental campaigns in the coming months.
They've already been pounding the streets, collecting public comments on global warming to pressure the the EPA to act boldly. Last night they hit the phones and persuaded hundreds of Greenpeace supporters to make a phone call to their Congressional reps about supporting the Chemical Security Act.
We're proud to be training and supporting the next generation of eco-activists. It makes a lot of sense to us. This is the generation that will feel the biggest impacts from the environmental decisions that are being taken today — and they feel strongly about having a voice in those debates. Through the GOT we support them with the knowledge and skills to be heard, to organize others, to build movements.
I can't wait to see what these students will do next...
If this sounds like something that you — or a young person you know — would love to be doing, then apply now for our Fall Semester program HERE.
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About Me
starbuck
Student at Hard Knocks
Amanda Starbuck is Greenpeace's Student Organizing Manager
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You first refer to the students as future “leaders,” then you call them “eco-activists.” Isn’t it a bit ingenuous to call them leaders, when you’re actually only training them to be rebel rousers? Leaders generally think independently, and don’t have to be trained to collect followers. Leaders do more for society than distribute photographs of protestors in the foreground of honest businesses.
It’s a shame that Greenpeace chooses to protest capitalism rather than protect the environment… The millions of dollars COULD be used to save actual lives of flora & fauna.
But then look who’s talking… Here I am tilting at windmills!
Our students are future leaders and you're right that independent thought is a key trait - that's why it's one of the criteria we use to interview and select the students accepted into the GOT.
*$
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