Mycelium Youth’s partner schools and their communities are disproportionately impacted by climate issues including legacy pollution, extreme heat, and sea-level rise–among other socio-ecological impacts. The aim of this project is to develop a model for evaluating a given school’s climate resilience, implementing youth-led resiliency projects, and developing a climate resiliency curriculum. The model will provide guidance and resources for partner schools to develop physical infrastructure and increase capacity in response to climate issues and emergencies. The model will be customizable so it can be used at various school sites and to combat various climate issues.
The Mycelium Youth Network serves frontline youth in the San Francisco Bay Area. They work with partner schools and their students in urban environments and predominately low-income, Black, and Brown communities. These communities have been disproportionately impacted by environmental issues due to a history of divestment, structural racism, and inequity. Some of these challenges include legacy pollution, flooding, extreme heat, air quality, and drought. The community also struggles with access to funding/resources, green spaces, and affordable, quality food and housing.
Mycelium Youth provides STEAM programming grounded in indigenous environmental traditions to empower these youth to take action against the climate issues they experience. Since 2017, they have served over 1,500 youth and launched programs such as the Youth Leadership Council, Gaming for Justice, and Climate Resilient School Initiatives.
The Mycelium Youth Network would like to develop a model for assessing and implementing climate-resilient schools. This model will be used as a guide at various partner schools to:
This model will be incorporated into existing Mycelium Youth programming. It will aid these schools in achieving climate resilience, for their students and the communities they reside in. It will also empower youth to take leadership rooted in cultural and community values in addressing these issues.
The project team will work with the scientist at all stages of model development including ideation, collecting stakeholder feedback, integration with existing programming, and piloting implementation. Throughout the project, the scientist will engage with youth, school staff, school community residents, policy stakeholders, and allied community organizations. Additionally, the scientist could aid in scoping funding opportunities. The model output will include:
Timeline and Milestones
The timeline will be refined as the community scientist co-develops plans with the project team. The model would ideally be ready by Fall 2024. Some of the key milestones include:
Andrew Yeung (he/they) is a community-based educator and organizer learning and laboring to de-center and dismantle the school-prison nexus; co-create, mentor, and steward the agency and emancipatory spirit of Black, Indigenous, youth of color; and alongside youth leaders, reclaim the dignity of education as a practice of freedom. They are particularly engaged with youth power building against economies of violence and extraction. Andrew was born in San Gabriel, California – the unceded territories of Kizh and Tongva peoples – and raised by East Asian working class immigrant parents. They now work to be a good guest and neighbor on unceded Lisjan Ohlone land.
Lil Milagro Henriquez, M.A. (she / her) (detribalized Nahuat Pipil), was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and whose family survived Hurricane Katrina—one of the nation’s most infamous climate-change-related disasters. She is a 20-year veteran of social and environmental justice activism. She is a mother, passionate organizer, and lover of all things nerdy. In 2014, she won the Jonathan Daniels Memorial Fellowship for Social Justice award. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering frontline youth for climate change. In 2020, she received the Women’s Earth Alliance fellowship and the 2021 recipient of the Partners Advancing Climate Equity fellowship. She was recently recognized as one of the top 16 Eco-Warriors of 2021 by Marin Magazine and did a TEDx talk with the City of San Francisco illuminating the failures of conventional education to prepare youth for climate change in 2022. In 2023, she was featured in Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan as a climate resilience leader to watch and recently spoke as a panelist at the White House’s launch of the 5th National Climate Assessment report as well as CBS Nightly News.
Violet Wulf-Saena has served as an international climate change expert for over ten years working with the United Nations’ Least Developed Countries and Small Island States to protect communities from the impacts of climate change. Violet’s dedication to elevating community leadership and response to environmental justice is rooted from her lived experiences in the South-Pacific. She now works in the Bay Area partnering with governments, research institutions, and community-based organizations to build community capacity to respond to climate change and sea-level rise. In 2020, she founded Climate Resilient Communities (CRC). Alongside her work as CRC’s Executive Director, Violet serves as the equity program manager for the Bay Area Climate Adaptation Network (BayCAN), as an environmental justice advisor for the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), and as a community advisory council member to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD).
Violet earned her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. She also earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Management from Dresden University in Germany, a Postgraduate Diploma in Climate Change Urban Management Tools from Erasmus University in the Netherlands, a Proficiency Certificate in Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments on Climate Change from Waikato University in New Zealand, and a Master’s in Environmental Management at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in North Carolina.
Alexandra Novak (she/her) is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Environmental Engineering program, where she conducts research on the affordability and service performance of U.S. water utilities. She is passionate about all things water, community engagement approaches to research, and science communication. Outside of research, she enjoys spending time with friends, traveling, and learning languages.
Mycelium Youth: Mycelium Youth Network (MYN) prepares youth in the SF Bay Area—who are most vulnerable to and already feeling the effects of environmental racism—for climate change. We use a merger of indigenous environmental traditions that emphasize youth environmental stewardship and relationship building alongside a rigorous STEAM curriculum that focuses on practical hands-on skills for climate resilience and mitigation that youth create and implement in their homes and local communities. We empower youth to grow as visionary leaders and budding environmentalists, connect with ancestral teachings, and trust in the wisdom of the natural world.
