By Sasha Trask, she/her
In my sophomore year of high school, when the world had just begun to recover from the COVID 19 pandemic I was invited by a teacher, asking if I wanted to join a club called Change Makers.
Change Makers is a student led organization that aims to help their local community. Every year we brainstorm and develop a project that we will focus on. Last year we wanted to help bring back native pollinators to our area. We started out with a very large idea, we wanted to not only plant things but we wanted to talk to our local government and HOAs about changing regulations about city and home planting. Although we did research some HOAs and meetings that we could attend, in the end we decided to focus on the social side of the problem. We got the opportunity to go to a tree farm and cut clippings from larger branches to create new trees. Soon after we attended Lafayette’s Earth Day event and got to educate people on pollinators and native plants, then they each left with a potted native plant to put in their yard. We asked that people mark on a map where they would plant it so that we could see if we successfully made a green corridor.
This year we are working on spreading awareness about fast fashion and are learning all about mending and repurposing clothes as well as learning where to shop. We went to Goodwill by the pound to buy supplies to prepare for this year's Earth Day event, where we taught people how to silk-screen over clothes they dislike and handed out patches. To learn how to silk-screen and repair clothes we attended a workshop at CU. ON Earth Day we had great success in handing out our shirts and teaching people about fast fashion and screen printing. We had about 300 shirts to begin with and ended the day with about 20 left.
Back when my teacher asked me about the club I was unsure at first but now I am so glad I joined. I get to work with an incredible bunch of weirdos who are all just as passionate about the world as I am. I get to go on trips for volunteering and find more and more ways to live, learn, and teach in an environmentally friendly way.
