ECO Scouts - Multigenerational Organization

Christmas 2021 “Scouts can be Santa Claus too”

Our chapter of scouts have been working on the website and apps that we are making for ECO Scouts everywhere. We have been working on a model for people everywhere can learn from and grow with. The vision is that children from all over the world should have a great present. That was what Santa Claus was all about. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. This must be what Santa Claus was thinking as he headed around the world delivering his packages. That is our plan to help people be the change everyone wants to see when it comes to protecting the planet from the threat of climate change. People have had faith in lots of things and sometimes faith alone does not allways lead to change. Doing things does, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. People have for a long time believed in America and felt that Democracy is the best solution to bring about change and the best way to be free. Well that only works when people participate in it. To leave the responsibility to people that we have elected to rule and run our country only works when they are good people that want the best for everyone. I was born in the USA but now it looks more like the “Divided States of America”. People are bagging on each other for what they think, not a people united together for everyones well being. My question is what type of people were both Christ and Santa Claus? Were they democrats, republicans, socialists or communists or what flag were they waving? We’ll both spent their lives caring and giving to other people. Both did not presume to be interested in wealth or themselves as much as others. We live in a world that is always changing and that is the way the world has always been. Take action “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. This is why we can’t leave changing the world to just anyone, everyone has to be apart of it. We all need to make that happen. To think you can make a change by supporting a political party, your government, any group or anyone person may not work that well. You have to “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. This is what ECO Scouting is about to always be prepared and be ready to learn new thing and boldly go and do what needs to be done.

Earth Guardians

We inspire and train diverse youth to be effective leaders in the environmental, climate, and social justice movements.

Mission

Using art, music, storytelling, on the ground projects, civic engagement, and legal action, we advance solutions to the critical issues we face as a global community.

Earth Guardians represents thousands of young activists, artists, and musicians that are on the front lines driving action and fueling the cultural shift toward a regenerative future.

Earth Guardians is an inter generational organization that trains diverse youth to be effective leaders in the environmental, climate and social justice movements across the globe – using art, music, storytelling, on the ground projects, civic engagement and legal action to advance solutions to the critical issues we face as a global community.

Our Regional Directors

Our Regional Directors host monthly crew calls to ensure all information between the Core Team and our crews is flowing, and that you have what you need. If you do not have a Regional Director in your area, you will have the opportunity to work with one of our Crew Success or Crew Engagement Managers directly.

Our Youth Speakers

If you are looking for a dynamic youth leader for your event, someone who represents the youth voice and vision of Earth Guardians, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve undergone a rigorous selection process to bring you the most engaged, powerful, and inspirational speakers from the Earth Guardians global community.

Our Youth Council

The Earth Guardians Youth Council acts as the youth decision making body to guide EG projects and programs. We work to amplify the impact, connectivity and clarity of EG’s branding, initiatives, projects, partner campaigns and curriculum. We are ensuring the representation of the youth voice in the realization of the greater Earth Guardian mission to build a healthy, just, and sustainable world.

Indigenous Youth Committee

The Indigenous Youth Committee consists of 8 Indigenous youth leaders that come from native nations across turtle island. They are essential in the training development process as members of EG’s Indigenous Youth Committee. Based on the youths’ experience at the 2019 training, and the current environmental justice work in their individual communities, the Indigenous Youth Committee organize the location, focus, facilitators, and schedule of the training as seen through the lens of decolonization, environmental justice, cultural resilience, sovereignty and healing. This team not only serves as the core visionaries in the planning process, but they help with logistics on-the-ground. Weekly group calls are facilitated with the Indigenous Youth Committee and EG staff to aid in fundraising and organizing the initiative.

Our Team

Our team makes it possible for the earth guardians to do what they do best. From office maintenance and taking out the compost to brainstorming and campaign support. This team works behind the scenes to make the movement move.

Our Partners

We are in a critical moment of history where there is power in numbers and strength in alliances. At its core, Earth Guardians is defined by its community, and the ways in which we respect, honor and work with our partners. We partner with businesses and organizations to create awareness and strengthen the climate, environmental and social justice movements at large.

Fridays For Future

FFF, is a youth-led and -organized global climate strike movement that started in August 2018, when 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate. In the three weeks leading up to the Swedish election, she sat outside Swedish Parliament every school day, demanding urgent action on the climate crisis. She was tired of society’s unwillingness to see the climate crisis for what it is: a crisis.

To begin with, she was alone, but she was soon joined by others. On the 8th of September, Greta and her fellow school strikers decided to continue their strike until the Swedish policies provided a safe pathway well under 2° C, i.e. in line with the Paris agreement. They created the hashtag #FridaysForFuture, and encouraged other young people all over the world to join them. This marked the beginning of the global school strike for climate.

Their call for action sparked an international awakening, with students and activists uniting around the globe to protest outside their local parliaments and city halls. Along with other groups across the world, Fridays for Future is part of a hopeful new wave of change, inspiring millions of people to take action on the climate crisis, and we want you to become one of us!

Sunrise Movement

Sunrise’s Principles are guidelines which we all commit to upholding. Any action, member, or group that does not embody these principles are not a part of Sunrise.

Sunrise’s Principles
1. We are a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good-paying jobs in the process.
end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and well being of all people.
2. We grow our power through talking to our communities.
We talk to our neighbors, families, religious leaders, classmates, and teachers, in order to spread our word. Our strength and work is rooted in our local communities, and we are always growing in number.
3. We are people from all paths of life.
We are of many colors and creeds, from the plains, mountains, and coasts. A wealthy few want to divide us, but we know our differences make us stronger. We are united in the shared fight to make real the promise of a society that works for everyone. Our country has enough for all of us.
4. We are nonviolent in word and deed.
Remaining nonviolent allows us to win the hearts of the public and welcomes the most people to take part. We need maximum participation in order to achieve our goals.

Leah Namugerwa

“Most people do not care what they do to the environment. I noticed adults were not willing to offer leadership and I chose to volunteer myself. Environmental injustice is injustice to me.”
As a 14-year-old member of Fridays for Future Uganda, Leah Namugerwa strikes every Friday for climate justice. Leah was inspired by Greta Thunberg but was truly moved to act after seeing the famine caused by drought and landslides from climate change. Despite the Ugandan government’s harsh response to strikers, Leah continues to fight for change. Currently, she is demanding a Ugandan plastic bag ban, and her petition can be found here.
Leah talked with us about what it’s like to climate strike in Uganda, and how she ignored the critics who called her strikes ‘weird’ — read the full post here.

Leah Namugerwa) is a youth climate activist in Uganda. She is known for leading tree planting campaigns and for starting a petition to enforce the plastic bag ban in Uganda. Following inspiration from Greta Thunberg, she began supporting school strikes in February 2019 with fellow Fridays for Future Uganda organizer Sadrach Nirere.

Namugerwa spoke at the World Urban Forum in 2020 and was a youth delegate at COP25. Her uncle, Tim Mugerwa is also a prominent environmentalist in Uganda. Leah Namugerwas is a member of the Anglican Church of Uganda.

Namugerwa heard of Greta Thunberg and her Friday strikes in 2018. She was later inspired to take similar action as Greta Thunberg at 13, after she watched a local news report about mudslides and flooding in rural sections of the country.^[1] Namugerwa has since become a prominent young climate advocate and an integral member of Africa’s most prominent chapter of Fridays for Future taking place in Uganda. She teamed up with Sadrach Nirere, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, and her cousin Bob Motavu to birth the Fridays for Future Uganda. She has been engaged in Friday striking since February 2019, calling for more climate actions, and she has led the writing of a petition to enforce the ban of plastic bags.

Leah Namugerwa celebrated her 15th birthday by planting 200 trees instead of throwing a birthday party, and since then she has launched the Birthday Trees project, to give out seedlings to those who wish to celebrate their birthdays by planting trees. Her major goal is to see the enforcement of current climate legislation (Paris 21 agreement) and to attract more coverage of issues of climate change.^] She organized marches along with other young climate advocates to mark the global climate strike on 29 November 2020, and the lakeshore of Kampala’s Ggaba Beach was also cleaned to celebrate the day; Dorothy Nalubega, a member of a women’s agriculturalist and environmental group was also in attendance. Namugerwa has continuously called on the government of Uganda to fully implement the Paris Climate Agreement.

Follow Leah on Twitter @NamugerwaLeah

Jamie Margolin

17-year-old Jamie Margolin is the founder and co-executive director of Zero Hour, a youth- and women of color-led movement that aims to support new young activists and organizers with the tools, training, and resources that they need to fight climate change and protect our natural resources. Jamie speaks passionately and urgently about the intersectional issues of social justice, environmental protections, climate change, indigenous rights, and more, and isn’t afraid to call out corporate leaders and others who have contributed to our environmental crises.

Jamie Margolin is an American climate justice activist and served as the co-executive director of Zero Hour. Margolin identifies as a lesbian and speaks openly about her experiences as an LGBT person. She has written for various media outlets, such as CNN and Huffington Post.

Her writing about climate change has appeared in many publications including HuffPost, Teen Ink and CNN. She was part of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 class of 2018. In 2018, she was also named as one of People Magazine‘s 25 Women Changing the World.

She has garnered some notoriety as a plaintiff in the Aji P. v. Washington case, suing the state of Washington for their inaction against climate change on the basis of a stable climate being a human right.

In September 2018, Margolin was part of a youth group that sued Governor Jay Inslee and the State of Washington over greenhouse-gas emissions in the state. The case was dismissed by a King County Superior Court judge, who ruled the case to be political one that must be resolved by the Governor and the legislature. It has since been appealed Washington Court of Appeals.

In September 2019, she was asked to testify on a panel called “Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis” alongside Greta Thunberg for the United States House of Representatives.

Follow Jamie on Twitter @Jamie_Margolin and Instagram @jamie_s_margolin

Saoi O’Connor

“If a politician comes to my door, I start asking them hard questions. Some of them are shocked . . . The politicians we elect this weekend will have a direct influence over whether or not my generation inherits a liveable planet.”
Every friday morning, 16-year-old Saoi O’Connor travels two hours from her home to the city to protest. Saoi has been dissenting in her own way since the age of four when her parents started the Fair-Trade Committee in her town. Now she is one of the critical figures of Ireland’s youth climate rebellion.

Saoi O’Connor began the Fridays for Future strike in Cork City on 11 January 2019 outside Cork City Hall^[holding a poster which says “The Emperor Has No Clothes”. O’Connor made their first media appearance aged 3 as part of a fair trade campaign during St Patrick’s Day. O’Connor moved away from mainstream education at Skibbereen Community School to continue their studies home-schooling to allow them to work full time on climate justice activism full-time. In February 2019, O’Connor travelled to the European Parliament in Strasbourg to join fellow activists for the climate debates.

O’Connor was one of the 157 delegates to the 2019 RTÉ Youth Assembly on Climate, and attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid the same year.^[7] In December 2019, O’Connor was awarded the Outstanding Individual at the Cork Environmental Forum’s Awards ceremony. During the ceremony, they remarked on how little had changed regarding climate change policy since they began their climate strike. The Fridays for Future Cork group, of which O’Connor is a member, also received a commendation from the Forum.

Follow Saoi on Twitter @saoi4climate

Lilly Platt

Just at 9 years old, Lilly Platt, started going on a war to end plastic pollution. When Lilly first moved to Holland her grandfather began teaching her to speak Dutch, and to help her learn numbers, they collected pieces of plastic trash and counted them. She no longer needs the practice but she’s still picking up plastic. Today, Lilly is a Youth Ambassador for the Plastic Pollution Coalition and a Child Ambassador for HOW Global and World Cleanup Day.

Platt is known for her youth and for going on peaceful strikes to voice out environmental concerns. She is the Global Ambassador of YouthMundus, Earth.org, and WODI; youth ambassador for Plastic Pollution Coalition and How Global; and child ambassador for the World Cleanup Day. Platt initially went viral on social media after posting litter of plastic she picked up—sorted accordingly. Over the years she has picked up more than 100,000 of pieces of litter.Platt was born in Britain. Her family moved to Netherlands when she was seven years old.

In 2015, Platt was walking along a park in the Netherlands with her grandfather when she noticed litter of plastic scattered on the ground. She decided to count them to practice her Dutch. They gathered 91 pieces of plastic within 10 minutes. Her grandfather further told her how the trash ends up as plastic soup. The said incident triggered her environmental initiative, and at 7 years old, she started Lilly’s Plastic Pickup. Through Lilly’s Plastic Pickup, she picks up litter and sorts them meticulously. She posts them on social media so as to raise awareness on the issue. Over the years Platt has picked up more than 100,000 pieces of trash, ranging from bottles, cigarette packets, drink cartons etc. Through Lilly’s Plastic Cleanup, Platt also shares the effect of plastic on wildlife and the ecosystem. Since going viral her initiative has garnered international acclaim.

Ever since she was a child, Platt has shown fondness for animals, particularly those considered physically unappealing. She was bullied in school because of this, and only one of her peers showed interest in her cleanup activities. Platt then moved to The King’s School where many of her classmates participated in her clean-up efforts.

In the 2019 Dutch elections, Platt’s grandfather voted on her behalf, as she is campaigning for the ban of plastic. Platt took a video and encouraged others to do the same.

In September 2018, Platt saw Greta Thunberg‘s protest outside the Swedish Parliament concerning the enforcement of Paris Agreement. She was inspired and decided to go on strike too. After a few weeks, Greta Thunberg joined Platt’s strikes in the Netherlands, considering the Netherlands had been one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gas in the European Union. Both were invited to Brussels where they attended a climate rally outside the European Parliament.

Every Friday, Platt goes on strike outside government buildings to protest regarding the climate crisis,^[with or without company.

Follow Lilly on Twitter @lillyspickup

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

“My father taught me to see the magic in everything. Growing up, magic was in the sunrise and the rainfall. In every expression of life, no matter how small. I think that that was one of the most valuable wisdom that shaped who I was as a young boy. It gave me the perspective to see what was behind the dysfunction of our society, of our broken world, our dying ecosystems and corrupt leaders”

While Xiuhtezcatl started speaking about the environment at just age 6, he is now a 19-year-old indigenous activist, musician, and the youth director of Earth Guardians, an organization that trains youth across the world to use civic engagement and the arts to help solve environmental issues. As a hip-hop artist, Xiuhtezcatl also often uses music to convey powerful environmental messages. He is also not afraid to confront the government head-on, as he was one of the 21 plaintiffs that sued the federal government for their lack of action on climate change.

also known by the initial X, is an American environmental activist and hip hop artist. Martinez was youth director of Earth Guardians until 2019, a worldwide environmental organization.

Martinez has spoken to large crowds about the effects of fossil fuels on the indigenous and other marginalized communities. He has spoken at the United Nations several times, and he gained popularity after delivering a 2015 speech at the United Nations General Assembly in English, Spanish and his native language, Nahuatl.

Martinez is one of 21 plaintiffs involved in Juliana v. United States, a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government for failing to act on climate change. The lawsuit was filed in 2015, and a federal court rejected the government’s move to dismiss the case in November 2016. Martinez is also one of seven plaintiffs in the Martinez v. Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission case; that case is a state-level lawsuit similar to Juliana v. United States.

As a teenager, Martinez has given TED talks and was invited to speak before the United Nations on environmental policy. In June 2015, he spoke at the age of 15 in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl before the UN General Assembly on Climate Change. Martinez urged immediate climate action saying, “What’s at stake right now is the existence of my generation.”

That same year, he competed with young musicians from around the world who submitted self-produced music “to inspire the negotiations” at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with their music and Martinez’s selection “Speak for the Trees” was chosen as the Jury Award Winner.

Martinez asserts that education and young people are key elements of the movement for significant social and environmental change: “The marching in the streets, the lifestyle changes haven’t been enough so something drastic needs to happen. The change that we need is not going to come from a politician, from an orangutan in office, it’s going to come from something that’s always been the driver of change – people power, power of young people.” When addressing the criticism of young people overusing technology in a 2016 interview with Bill Maher, Martinez noted that technology also brings people together to focus on a shared concern: “I think it’s an important tool that we have for networking and connecting with people. Social media and technology – it’s either a downfall and distraction for our generation, or a powerful tool we can use.”

Follow Xiuhtezcatl on Twitter @xiuhtezcatl and Instagram @xiuhtezcatl

David Wicker

“We will not stop until politicians and leaders decide to take action”

14-year-old David Wicker lives in Italy and has been organising groups of students to protest via Fridays for Future in Turin, Italy and internationally with the purpose of asking governments all around the world to place the Climate Change issue as their top priority in their agendas and to start respecting the regulation of international agreements and treaties.

Find David on Twitter @davidwicker_hf and Instagram @davidwickerhf