(gentle music) - This is our home and we have to do what we can to save it, to help it, to empower others around us.

- There's going to be a lot more fires if we don't do something about all the climate change.

There's a lot that we can do such as work to prevent fire through prescribed or cultural burns.

- I would say a lot of youth nowadays, especially in this generation are very aware.

- It was really nice to know that there was these other people my age, who were talking about these issues.

(people cheering) - [Voiceover] Bay Area Bountiful is about agriculture.

It's about feeding us.

It's about land and water.

It's about the health of our planet.

It's about stories that matter.

(gentle music) Bay Area Bountiful, Cultivate.

Celebrate.

Connect.

- [Ad Reader] Bay Area Bountiful is made possible in part by ROCKY, the free range chicken and ROSIE, the original organic chicken, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Made Local Magazine, and Sonoma County Go Local, and through the generous support of Sonoma Water.

- [Narrator] Climate change is here.

While it affects all of us, its impact touches us in different ways and with different levels of severity.

Young people in particular hold so much of that weight on their shoulders, considering how climate change affects them now and what their futures will look like.

The city of East Palo Alto has been an underserved community for decades; known to residents as EPA, environmental challenges due to global warming here are nothing new.

Right at the bay's edge, sea level rise has been an ongoing concern, along with many environmental injustices, but the members of Youth United for Community Action are working to change their future.

- Youth United for Community Action, or YUCA for short, is focused on equipping young people who we work with with the skills that they need to find their voice to help advocate for social justice issues, as well as environmental justice issues.

And we know those two are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, there's a whole lot of overlap between those.

- It's very fun here and all of the youth have say, so, you know, speaking out on the environmental injustices, especially being in a lower income community that we suffer.

- It's called food for thought, it just cuts them open.

- YUCA starts from like 12 plus; members come from different schools around the area.

Climate change is something that we as youth are concerned about, mostly because we're going to be having to take care of the earth once most people aren't here to take care of it anymore.

- We're going to be out next week you all, so everything that is like ready to be harvested, we got to - They're able to capture this kind of political language through the political education that we do here, to help advocate for our communities, ensuring that we have communities that are sustainable and resilient to climate change.

- Youth are very aware of climate change, especially in this generation.

And that's why I feel like it's become so powerful is because we have youth all over the world speaking out about this.

- I feel like youth now are more aware of climate change than previous ones.

I feel like nowadays, it's kind of like you can't afford to not know about what it is.

- Our winters are getting colder, our summers are getting super hot and we don't have cooling systems or even cooling centers.

Not to mention during the summers, we have the smokiness in the air from the very unfortunate fires that have become somewhat of a pattern.

And when you add that to the fact that East Palo Alto, because of environmental racism, is a community that has disproportionate rates of asthma, all of those things culminating together really create a perfect storm for the conditions that our people here experience the brunt of, when it comes to climate change.

- We have this big backyard and we noticed that there's a lot more we can do with it.

And one of the things that we thought was a great idea after getting our rain barrel installed was creating a garden.

- We have found that young people here are super brilliant.

And bursting at the seams with creative ideas about how to do small scale climate change adaptations that are very replicable.

- Looks like a little flower.

- They want to interrupt the history of being a food desert by cultivating our own fruits and vegetables.

- We might need another bowl or tray, 'cause we're filling up quick.

We have more stuff than we thought.

- [Volunteer] Wait, what about this box?

- We've been working with Luna Vez Farms.

Our person Rooney has been coming through, showing us the way on how to harvest, how to keep them growing, what grows best.

- In the garden, when we planted everything, it was really spaced apart.

Remember that?

And you could see the dirt in between all the plants- Gardening classes and teaching how to grow the food, starting from the seed, letting them engage with the plants, and hopefully instilling a better appreciation for food and the work that it takes.

- Our local garden was born out of the idea that we can turn YUCA into a resilience hub that can be showcased to the rest of our community and that can be replicated.

When climate change experts come into our community, they're talking to us about 30 year horizons or 50 year horizons.

And we're really a working class community that is thinking about, hmm, that sounds important, but I'm worried about how to pay my rent next month.

So, by creating language that resonates with our community members and our youth, that helps connect the dots for our community to say look, climate change is already here, and this is what it looks like for us.

- With me, I didn't really know anything about climate change until I came here to YUCA, you know?

I was educated about this topic.

I feel like this generation nowadays, they're more like, woke.

- A lot of the work that we do sometimes focuses on advocacy or speaking truth to power, you know, attending city council meetings.

Organizing is a slow, steady process that takes commitment and dedication.

So when you're able to have these moments where you go into the garden and you see, you know, a cucumber or a strawberry that you planted just last week or the week prior, it really is like a mini celebration.

- You could put them really close together like this.

They would ask me what, what can we do with the food?

How do we make this food?

And so from there, we started developing little cooking classes, and- For the strawberries, it says to cut 'em in a certain width.

- Cause I was surprised when I saw that we had strawberries, I was like "strawberries!"

- So much growth happens when we see young people come here and stay here.

They are, they turn into advocates.

People who come in very shy, all of a sudden are giving confident public comment before elected officials and it's mind boggling.

- There are so many rewarding things about working with YUCA.

Being able to help the community is the biggest one for me.

Being able to give people a voice who may not think they have one.

- Because you know how the cilantro on this side- - We can have community members come by and we can offer them fresh produce.

We have been in a food desert for a while, especially some of our families have struggled with that.

Whether it's a few zucchinis or some strawberries, just anything to help them out.

- We made it part of our business model, my farm and the CSA that we run, to donate 20% of what we buy from all the farms every week.

And we donate it to YUCA, and the youth here share it with their families and with their community.

- In a food desert, when stores are far away, it's better to start farming in your household, 'cause you aren't dependent on other places like stores.

Here, we provide our own produce or we get local produce.

- And especially when we're giving out produce, seeing smiles on their face, it's amazing.

- To be part of an organization that is so truly authentically youth led, created, and run is so amazing because you see young people step into their own power.

And it's to the sky from there.

- Congratulations.

(light cheering) - [Narrator] While East Palo Alto teens work to create a climate resiliency hub by cultivating their community garden, Sonoma County students are also heading outdoors to learn about the flora and fauna in the hills of Santa Rosa.

- [Camera Operator] Do you know what kind of lizard he is?

- Yeah, this is a Western fence lizard.

- [Camera Operator] Okay.

- I'm going to release him, he was just hanging out here.

I don't want him to get stuck on- - [Bystander] What kind of lizard is he?

- A blue belly.

- I was mainly interested in this program because I spent a lot of time inside doing homework.

I don't really get out a lot, but the summertime it's sunny, the weather's nice, and I really want an excuse to get out.

So I thought being outside nature would be fun.

And I'm really glad I came here, 'cause I think I want to choose a career in environmental science.

I didn't realize that I like being outside so much, that it was something I was passionate about.

- [Narrator] During the summer, North Bay conservation institution Pepperwood Preserve hosts TeenNat, a free program where high school students get to spend time in nature and learn about science and ecology.

- After participating in TeenNat, our goal is to have the teens feel more comfortable being in the outdoors and to be able to picture themselves, spending more time in the outdoors and in nature.

After we've established that level, we can then start to layer in more content, introducing them to the types of work that they could potentially pursue in the future.

So we give them some hands on experiences with field research.

We help them meet career professionals that are in conservation.

The idea is to open some doors for them and give them the chance to try things out and see whether or not this could be a fit for them in their future.

- We're going to head out into the field and Stephanie is going to teach us some wilderness survival skills.

We get to get hands on.

We're going to go out and pretend we're like lost in the woods.

(teens chatting) - [Narrator] Today, the teens are learning how to make an A-frame survival shelter.

- You're going to find two branches that make that cross beam.

And I'm going to give you Paracord to then tie the top together, but you also need a spine.

So you're going to put the spine here.

You have these two and then you're going to put a bunch of sticks on the side.

Okay.

Let's go foraging.

- Where?

(teens chatting) - [Student] You're making a look.

- I came with a tree.

- Noice.

- All right.

Then we're going to do an A, so hold it.

It's one of my goals.

Being here to teach these kids how to be safe in nature, building their confidence and self-esteem in themselves knowing, Hey, I can get myself out of this.

Like I am prepared.

It helps them bond with the other teens.

It gives them leadership skills, follower skills that are equally as important.

Good teamwork, everyone.

So it's just not safety and survival.

It's so much more.

The rest of you can now start piling sticks all throughout this spine.

- [Student] Step on it.

(nervous laughter) - Here we go.

- Beautiful.

- Oh yeah.

Hold back, that.

- One of the ways that we approach teaching each group of teens we have with us each summer about climate science and climate resilience is starting on a landscape level here locally and looking at the ecological fire ecology here.

So first learning how the plants and animals that live here are adapted to fire or how fire might be impacting them negatively.

- Those are, those are.

Really good.

- I know we could use this for our- because of the area we live in, I think fire ecology is really important in helping prevent future disastrous wildfires.

Cuz I think we could really work with fire, more cultural burns and stuff to make fire less likely and plant native plants and stuff in order to prevent these horrible wildfires.

- It worries me a lot because well, mostly because of the animals and like their habitat because of climate change, their like habitat can change a lot.

Or destroy their homes.

- Mostly cuz of the animals because if we continue to do that, we can like, cause our own extinction.

- Specifically like water conservation and desalination and coming up with more ways to get like drinkable water and watershed science as well really interests me.

- [Camera Operator] See, look.

- Everyone look back at the camera.

- I'm just hidden.

Hi.

(cheery laughter) - The teens also are each invited to do an independent project, and many of them choose to dive deeper into climate change related subjects.

Cuz there's so much you can explore within the realm of climate from like very human focused solutions to more plant and animal focused solutions.

But in the end, all of those are connected.

And so we try to give them a variety of experiences to expose them to how all those different sort of circles overlap in the big Venn diagram of climate impacts.

- We are currently testing water that came from the Napa river.

If I was going to study an area of the field, I'd prefer it be near a river or like a pond or a lake so that I could study like fish, frogs and anything that would live near the body of water.

- You just spilt water.

- Really?

- [Camera Operator] It's me again!

- my projects on the fire resistant adaptive or tolerant species at Pepperwood preserve all the native plants here and I'm doing like a little journal, like information booklet, I guess, where I write the name of each plant.

Talk about the plant where it grows, all that stuff.

- I'm doing kind of like a log of everything that I find here.

And like how many times I see it and then just kind of writing a little bit about each organism and stuff.

- I think having an opportunity like this for teens can be a glimmer of hope in an otherwise kind of dire, you know, there's a lot of headlines out there and really scary news about climate change.

And I think that a lot of young people are feeling the burden of that falling on their shoulders and having the opportunity to participate in a program like TeenNat can help them see paths where they can directly get involved with solutions going forward.

- We've learned a lot about the flora and fauna here and the native species around here.

And I think the first step to like being environmentally conscious is like just being aware of your surroundings and, and why we're even pushing for environmental change is because of these things around us.

And to learn about that, I think is the first step.

So I'm pretty passionate about that.

- [Narrator] While being out in the field is a great way to learn about environmental challenges, stepping into an imaginary world can also be educational.

Have you ever played a role playing game like Dungeons and dragons, otherwise known as D and D, where you become a character and play through a storyline?

If you have, did you ever play it to combat climate change?

- I'm here today for two reasons, one to play D and D and two to help with apocalyptic resilience.

- Because that's exactly what happened at the Exploratorium in San Francisco hosted by the non-profit Mycelium Youth Network, young and old came together to save a make believe town from a polluting tyrant.

- Well, well, well what do we have here?

A group of Intrepid adventurers?

You are too late.

My potion factory... - As part of their Gaming for Justice program.

Mycelium Youth Network creates home brewed campaigns where adventurers use teamwork and problem solving skills to explore environmental issues.

- We look at moments in the bay area's history and present that have had an environmental impact.

And then we think, how can we put this in a fantasy setting?

And then how can we support young people to play through this, and just like, let their imaginations go wild in terms of how they want to address it.

- When Lil and I first kind of discussed this adventure, she told me that story about how the wildfire smoke was impacting kids in like a very physical way that they could feel in their lungs.

It made their eyes sting.

It gave them nose bleeds and we thought air pollution is a pretty big topic.

And it's something that can be very visible.

Like when you see just kind of like unknown steam rising out of the factory, like that can be something that's menacing.

And so we kind of like looked at that and we were like, okay, let's build a campaign around air pollution.

- The way that air pollution kills So many communities is through like small breaths that we take every single day.

And so we wanted to think about how can we put this into a fantasy setting?

The way that we're doing it is we're creating a imaginary town where there's a potion manufacturing plant that is stripping resources of the surrounding area saying that they're building all of these new jobs.

But in reality, they're creating these potions which are toxic and they're emitting toxic chemicals.

- Our games starts meeting one of our non playable characters, Honu, who is a community leader in our Cerulean Port City, Our setting for the game.

Honu gives our players their mission.

- The mission was to get these papers from this factory and then give them to the townspeople so they can take this factory down.

Cuz this factory is producing a lot of smoke and harmful bacteria.

- There's two goals.

One of them is to gather evidence in order to draft legislation that shuts down the factory permanently.

- My feathers covered in soot.

Ugh!

I couldn't breathe trying to work.

- And the other goal is to take direct action and steal the factory source of power.

- You cannot take my box.

This is where all my power is.

I need this.

- Through the game design there I wanted to portray that like there's very direct things that you can do in terms of battling climate change.

And there's also some like ways to look into the future as well.

- The players gave me politicians.

- City hall is being able to hold them accountable.

- Adventurers who are trying to solve this problem.

- When you go into the factory that it's going to be really obnoxious fumes in the factory.

- And through that they work together to kind of stop this evil.

- So the things that students and adults are going to be doing when they're going through the campaign is like learning some of the things you would actually use for air pollution and how you would be able to protect yourself and your family.

- Has anybody made an air filter before?

What do need for air filter?

- You need a $20 box fan- - The reason why I think it's so important to talk to young people about climate resilient education is that for so many adults, it's still such a scary topic and they don't know how to address it or what to do with it.

And so as a result, we're not having these conversations with young people.

We're telling them here's the world that you're going to grow into.

Go to school, get good grades, keep doing everything that you need to do to like grow up and get a good job.

And youth are like, the world is falling apart and I know that it's falling apart and I'm deeply concerned that it's falling apart and no one is talking to me about it.

- There is a specific box.

That is the source of- - When I think about climate change itself, it makes me feel angry and sad and hopeless.

I even have like dreams about climate change which is not, not fun.

- It makes me feel sad because well, the polar bears, I like polar bears, but polar bears not being able to stand can't imagine that.

Birds that will never be able to fly again because of oil spills.

Us, future generations, not being able to breathe properly and having asthma that like I have asthma personally.

- As youth, like just hearing like straight, like these, this is the disaster.

This is what's going on.

Like, this is what's wrong with the earth.

And like, it's like very bad.

Like what can we do?

Kind of tying it into like fantasy and a little bit of role play and like kind of using fun, but also problem solving skills to kind of work through real world problems is a like softer and more like productive introduction to climate change, And you know, environmental activism.

- Dungeons and dragons is an incredible way to think about like hope and, and dreaming because it is limitless.

- So take these with you for any place where you see any slime or sludge in, in, in the factory.

- When it comes to a lot of climate justice stuff, for example, you can't build a world that you want to live in, unless you can imagine that world first.

- To figure out if you want to do combat or if you want to try to figure out another solution.

- We solved this problem faster without violence than the other groups with violence.

- Role play the distractions.

And then you have to tell me your charisma because that adds plus whatever to, to the distraction.

- In real life, I can't have charisma checks, but I can try and talk stuff out instead of, I don't know, getting angry or like just being calm and grounded to solve problems instead of ungrounded, - When we're kind of thinking about like empathy and building relationships and creating community, D and D is a great space for that because it encourages collaboration and working together to find solutions.

And those kinds of skills can be applied everywhere.

- What about some guidance from my team, if that's possible.

- This is our world.

No matter what your views are, your race is, who you are as a person, this is our home and we have to do what we can to save it, to help it, to empower others around us.

- Anyone have anything they want to give Shivani, any extra luck?

learning about climate change and activism and how to survive disasters.

- Congratulations for making it through toxic sludge.

- Just to set up, in general, seeing that come to life and seeing who's played through it and like have different strategies to like combat it really just taught me we all have different approaches, but like when we come together as a community and we can figure out real ways to solve this, we can get further.

- Congratulations on completing Death by a Thousand Friends.

Give yourselves a round of applause!

(energetic music) (bright music)