A number of Saskatoon students are hoping to capture the attention of policy makers in the province, as they bring awareness to the effects of climate change through a youth speaker series.
The series is aimed at bringing in kids across the city and province to push policymakers and school divisions to make meaningful decisions on the environment.
Summer Williams is one of the students who spoke in front of a loud and passionate crowd of her peers. She said her concerns stem from taking outdoor learning courses, which she said opened her eyes to what was happening around her.
“Ever since then, I’ve truly just wanted to be able to just do something for our earth because if you look around, this is what our earth gives us. It’s beautiful,” Williams said. “Why would we want to treat it so horribly?”
She wants to give multiple levels of government understanding about what youth want for their own future as the effects of climate change get passed down to her generation.
“It’s our futures we’re working for, so if we really care about it and we want to live our lives the way we want to live them then we need to start focusing on climate change now instead of pushing it off.”
Other students were echoing a similar sentiment about the need for a change to live a healthy life.
“Hopefully we can get heard and they finally find out why we are doing this and the reason behind it,” student Leia Dustyhorn said.
Michael Prebble, a Saskatoon teacher said the next generation of community leaders are taking what they learned in the classroom and fighting for change.
“There will be a series of talks throughout the year and going into next year just to help educate the public about climate change and what’s going on with it,” Prebble said.
While Prebble said he teaches a balanced perspective in the classroom, it’s the students that are ultimately leading their own charge and having the freedom to think for themselves on the issues that matter the most to them.
“It’s nice to have these projects that get them out there and understanding that it’s not just on paper or it’s not just in a classroom that we study these things,” he said. “They can get out into the real world and have an impact too.”