Page 20 - Sonoma County Gazette June 2017

Our Youth in Kenya
Latino students will promote education in Kenya
By Ricardo Ibarra, La Prensa
These three Latino students managed to graduate from High School this year
in Santa Rosa, thanks to opportunities provided by the Youth Connections program. Not only are they graduating, but by the end of June they will visit the African continent for humanitarian work with children in Kenya.
Staycations equal lower carbon footprints. Staying home, enjoying Sonoma County is great, but if you opt to travel, check your carbon footprint. Surprisingly, for a family vacation, ying is actually less carbon intensive than driving. But if you y, go non-stop to lower your footprint. Counteract your carbon use by buying carbon o sets. I o set mine through Sonoma County’s Center for Climate Protection (CCP).
Sip it Sonoma. Without bees, our diet would be extremely limited.
About one-third of ourA Campaign encouraging people to refuse straws in restaurants, while leaving cards asking their servers not to o er them, was kicked o at the Zero Waste Symposium (see my Gazette article, “1st Zero Waste Symposium in Sonoma County” online for more on this event). The US uses and discards 500 million straws daily – that’s 175 billion a year. Most end up in our waterways. More information at ZeroWasteSonoma.org.
Climate Protection Campaign brings CCE to more areas. Sonoma County’s Center for Climate Protection (CCP), and especially the e orts of Ann Hancock and Barry Vesser, helped bring San Jose, the largest city in California to adopt CCE, into the family of Community Choice Energy (CCE). CCP works actively to bring CCE to more Californians; there’re now eight communities with CCE and ve more coming soon. By 2020 about 18 million Californians will be served by Community Choice, with cumulative greenhouse gas emissions’ savings of 5.5 million metric tons, while saving their customers $190 million annually.
Order a TESLA Solar Roof. TESLA is now taking orders for their innovative solar roofs, made of tempered glass, 35% of which consists of solar panels. On average, the solar roofs cost less than a normal roof, even without the energy savings.The panels are stronger and weigh less than conventional roofs, and they’re self-defrosting.
Glaciers melting in Glacier Park. Three years ago I went on the rst Climate Hike, fundraising for CCP. We hiked for four days in Glacier National Park to highlight the rapid retreat of its glaciers, joking that soon we’d have to rename it “Mud National Park.” Now a US Geological Survey report con rms that soon there’ll be no glaciers in the park. Western Montana is heating up twice the global average, which exacerbates the glacier’s meltingt.
Isselle Tellez, Denise Morales and Jessie Ceballos got a shot for redemption after dropping out of High School. Now they will inspire other boys and girls who are probably facing greater obstacles than they did, in a part of the world where education is accessible only to those with money.
The trip is organized by
Children’s Humanitarian International, with the intention of creating leadership among youth and to motivate them to continue their studies, as well as giving them perspective of how things are in other parts of the world.
“Many of the students
here take school for
granted”, said the executive
director of CHI, Jordan Burns. “In Kenya you can only study if you can a ord to pay for it, while here most students don’t value what they have.”
But Isselle, Denise and Jesse know how di cult it is to complete high school, including the obstacles to earning enough for a decent living.
Isselle dropped out of High School when she was 17. “I started working seven days a week. After one year of working, when I was 18, I wanted a better job, but I wasn’t quali ed for anything without a High School Diploma. I learned about Youth Connections and went back to nish the necessary credits for graduation in 6 months,” said the 20 year old Santa Rosa native. This May will mark the end of her rst semester at Santa Rosa Junior College majoring in Criminal Justice. “I’m the rst generation of my family with the possibility of attending university”, said Isselle, “With this, I would be an example for my family, for them to aspire to be something when they grow up.”
Denise chose not to continue her studies at Healdsburg High School after having academic disagreements with the school sta . She recognized that her independent ways were di erent from other students. “Because of how I grew up, I learned to be independent and motivate myself, to overcome any obstacle and never give up,” she expressed.
“It’s the Economy!”Fighting climate change is good for it. There’s economic and job growth in clean energy, renewables, and ghting climate change. In 2015 over 8.1 million people were employed globally – 769K in the US – in jobs helping reduce climate change. Now the World Economic Forum projects that clean energy and energy e ciency can o set the cost of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, resulting in a worldwide gain of $19 trillion by
After her experience in Africa, 17 year old Denise wants to be a teacher. “I will have the opportunity to be with kids and to educate them. I will nd out how far I wanted to go in teaching. It will also be the rst time I leave Sonoma County, and I am ready for that,” she said.
Jesse is quite open about his situation: “I grew up in poverty and never had much, not even good clothes. I learned to be humble, meanwhile people around me, as American, take things for granted, little things like having water...”
This he says, is what inspired him to leave his comfort zone to help others, “even though I have many of the same di culties in nding housing,” When he returns from Africa Jesse plans on signing up with Peace Corps, to bring humanitarian aid wherever it’s needed. “I consider myself a person with many talents, but my gifts are not to make money with, that’s not what I’m looking for, instead I’m more life oriented and want to make people happy, even though at this moment I’m not sure how”, said Jesse, 20 years old.
2050, while creating six million new jobs in green energy. Because the current administration’s opposed to ghting climate change, the US is rapidly losing its leadership position in this arena. With it we’ll lose economically; we’ll lose jobs; and we’ll increase risks to our health. Coal and other fossil fuels are becoming more and more uneconomical, with renewable energy such as solar and wind rapidly replacing them as cheaper resources – ones that are healthier for people and for the planet. For instance, wind energy now supplies 5.5% of US electricity; the Netherlands just opened the world’s second largest o shore wind farm, which will provide 13% of that country’s electricity. Meanwhile on April 30th, Germany produced 85% of its electricity from renewables: wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power, and on March 23rd solar and wind power, combined, hit a peak of 49.2% of demand in California. Locally, Sonoma County’s ranks 13th in solar jobs in the nation, with a 44% increase last year.
In Ruiru, they will work and study in a school that CHI opened in the area with the help of nine Sonoma County students who made the trip last year, in 2016, the rst excursion of its kind by this organization founded by Burns.
“Over there many children are homeless because they lost their parents to AIDS or have been abandoned and live in the streets. We have around 150 students at the elementary school, between the ages of 4 and 14,” said Burns.
Learn about Sustainability & Climate Change at SRJC in July.
For more information on educational programs o ered by Youth Connections, call Herman G. Hernandez at 707-578-2034. Donations to help send Jesse Ceballos, Denise Morales, Isselle Tellez to Africa can be made at https://donate.childrenshumanitarian.org/fundraiser/916864
Translated to English by La Prensa Sonoma Intern, Jessie Velasco.
20 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 6/17
Two friends of mine are teaching classes in the Community Education Program at SRJC this summer that are worth checking out. Barbara Oldershaw, the
new Business and Community Outreach Coordinator at Solar Works, teaches “Conscious Consumer: Shop Your Values” on July 19th & 25th. Dawn Keiser, MS in Aeronautics, teaches “How Space Exploration Bene ts Society,” including NASA’s role in providing critical climate change information, on July 8th & 15th.
There’s more online. Go to sonomacountygazette.com to see “1st Zero Waste Symposium in Sonoma County” and “We Keep Marching,” articles that wouldn’t t into the print edition. © Copyright Tish Levee, 2017