By Rowena Gonden. Bay City News.
Two Bay Area teenagers' concerns about climate change recently led them to consider the less obvious effects of extreme weather, which resulted in dozens of homeless men, women and children getting shoes.
High school students Hanna Johnson and Audrey Hsu organized a shoe drive late last year as part of the Climate Leaders Fellowship, a free online forum for students interested in working together to combat the harmful effects of the Earth’s changing weather patterns in their respective communities.
Audrey Hsu, of Fremont, (left) on a project with Hanna Johnson, of Antioch, (right) collected shoes that were donated to organizations serving the homeless for their Climate Leaders Scholarship Project. (Alan Hsu via Bay City News)
The two-month collaboration was organized by student travel company Rustic Pathways, the foundation he created to fund social and environmental projects around the world, and Stanford University's Deliberative Democracy Lab.
“I’m very passionate about everything related to the environment,” said Hsu, as the 15-year-old freshman at St. Francis High School in Mountain View checked off a list of activities she’d organized in the name of environmental sustainability before speaking about the dangers microplastics pose to Bay Area waterways.
She signed up for the fellowship last fall to find out what other students are doing about climate change and ended up speaking with teenagers in Utah, Korea and Singapore.
Open to ages 14-18, the Climate Leaders Fellowship has teens conceive, carry out, and measure the results of their community service projects while sharing ideas with peers in other parts of the world who are doing similar work and receiving guidance from Rustic Pathways and Stanford University staff members in regular Zoom sessions.
Established in 2021, the fellowship saw 170 high school students participate in the latest round, connecting to remote discussions from across the United States, as well as countries including Myanmar, Thailand, India, France, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.
Hsu responded when Johnson, a junior at Deer Valley High School, sent a group message asking if anyone wanted to join her in brainstorming ways they could mitigate the effects of climate change at the grassroots level.
The couple began considering the possibilities: How about contributing to reforestation efforts as rising temperatures turn vast swaths of California forests into fuel for wildfires?
Alternatively, they could distribute cooling towels or plastic water bottles to make homeless people feel more comfortable during the summer heat.
In the end, Johnson and Hsu settled on a variation on that theme.
"Shoes can provide not only warmth for your feet when it's cold, but also a barrier from the scorching pavement," said Johnson, 16.
Though she regularly volunteers at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland and has her sights set on majoring in a science field at the University of California, Berkeley, Johnson admits she didn't know much about climate change when she began the fellowship and hadn't considered how extreme temperatures might affect homeless populations.
Once they settled on an approach, she and Hsu worked out the logistics.
Johnson set up a collection bin on campus, as well as one at the Antioch community center and a third at the dojo where he earned his black belt in karate.
Meanwhile, Hsu canvassed her Fremont neighborhood on foot, leaving more than 100 flyers asking donors to place shoes by her mailbox for pickup.
And over the course of several weeks, people responded: Hsu returned to find about three dozen pairs waiting for her, while Johnson says her followers brought garbage bags full of footwear to the dojo.
Sneakers, baby shoes, high heels and work boots – in total, the duo collected 155 pairs.
Johnson turned his loot over to a county-run service that finds permanent housing and provides basic supplies for those living on the streets.
Hsu dropped hers off at a men's shelter in San Jose, which in turn shared some of the donations with a nearby women's shelter.
“It ended up working out well,” Johnson said. “I was very happy with what I ended up with.”
The Climate Leaders Fellowship has a waiting list for applications for its next round of projects running from March 1 to April 30. Visit https://rusticpathways.com/young-climate-leaders-fellowship/ for more information.
This story was first published as part of the Inspire Me series on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit affiliate site supported by the Bay City News Foundation. You can read the original story here: https://localnewsmatters.org/2023/02/07/teens-environmental-project-provides-shoes-for-the-homeless/
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