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 obtaining shoes.
High school students Hanna Johnson and Audrey Hsu hosted 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 weather patterns. Earth changers in their respective communities.
Audrey Hsu, of Fremont, (left) in a project with Hanna Johnson, of Antioch, (right) collected shoes that were donated to organizations serving homeless people 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 anything related to the environment," Hsu said, as the 15-year-old freshman at St. Francis High School in Mountain View checked off a list of activities she had organized in the name of environmental sustainability before. to speak out about the dangers microplastics pose to Bay Area waterways.
She signed up for the scholarship last fall to find out what other students are doing about climate change, and ended up chatting with teens in Utah, Korea and Singapore.
Open to ages 14-18, 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 staff members. University in regular Zoom sessions.
Established in 2021, the scholarship saw 170 high school students participate in the latest round; they connected to remote discussions from across the United States, as well as from countries like Myanmar, Thailand, India, France, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.
Hsu responded when Johnson, a Deer Valley High School junior, 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 to consider the possibilities: How about contributing to reforestation efforts as soaring temperatures turn vast swaths of California forests into fuel for wildfires?
Alternatively, they could distribute cooling towels or plastic water bottles to make the homeless 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 against the scorching pavement," said Johnson, 16.
Although she regularly volunteers at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland and has her sights set on majoring in some field of science at the University of California, Berkeley, Johnson admits she didn't know much about climate change when she started the fellowship and didn't had 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 walked through his Fremont neighborhood, leaving more than 100 flyers asking donors to place shoes by his mailbox for pickup.
And over the course of several weeks, people responded: Hsu returned to find around three dozen pairs waiting for her, while Johnson says her followers brought trash bags full of footwear to the dojo.
Tennis shoes, baby shoes, high heels, and work boots; in all, the duo collected 155 pairs.
Johnson turned over his loot to a county-run service that finds permanent housing and provides basic supplies for those living on the streets.
Hsu left his 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 stressed. "I was very happy with what I ended up with."
Climate Leaders Fellowship has a waiting list for applications for its next round of projects running from March 1 to April 30. Visited https://rusticpathways.com/young-climate-leaders-fellowship/ to learn more.
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 note at the following link: https://localnewsmatters.org/2023/02/07/teens-environmental-project-provides-shoes-for-the-homeless/
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