Mycelium Youth Network's Leadership in Storytelling Inspires the Climate Leaders of Tomorrow
Earth Rising is proud to support Mycelium Youth Network’s (MYN)’s Leadership in Storytelling program (LIS). MYN is an organization dedicated to preparing frontline youth for hopeful and imaginative leadership in climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience through hands-on ancestral approaches and STEAM that emphasizes stewardship and relationship-building.
MYN chose the MLK Shoreline to be the anchor site for the initial cohort for LIS. This area is ranked in the top ten percent of the most heavily polluted regions across the state. The MLK Shoreline’s ecological conditions are the result of a long history of racist land-use planning decisions including current and ongoing operations from nearby polluting facilities; an industrial corridor, multiple freeways, international airport, and the Port of Oakland. Due to this neighboring communities experience chronic and acute environmental health impacts, as well as increased climate threats from rising sea levels, flooding, stormwater runoff, and extreme weather events.
To develop a framework for the LIS program, MYN collaborated with another of their own initiative Gaming for Justice. In Gaming For Justice, youth embark on live-action role playing adventures; traveling through time across various moments in the Bay Area's environmental history and present- from the deforestation of Oak trees, to the Black Panther's Land Bank program to air polluting factories and an underwater Wakanda. These games dare players to radically envision and enact another world we know is possible. Using the Gaming for Justice framework as a reference point, LIS was able to co-create and conjure up a curriculum to facilitate with youth participants a vision of a climate just future along the MLK Shoreline.
The initial cohort consisted of 12 youth from all over Oakland. Initial sessions focused on topics related to environmental justice 101, the power of radical imagination within social justice movements, and the history of the San Francisco (SF) Estuary. Through MYN’s partnership with Save the Bay, youth were able to engage in hands-on shoreline and habitat restoration activities that contributed to the removal of 371 pounds of trash, 400 pounds of invasive weeds, and planting of 700 native western goldenrod and marsh gum plants. In addition, youth also participated in field trips that took them to native plant nurseries. During anchor site days, youth practiced reimagining their relationship to the land by learning the history of the place and embarking on ecologically expansive adventures intended to spark collective visions of a climate just future.
Beginning in May, the LIS participants turned their attention towards planning for the culmination event and closing day of their cohort, which was the Community Day of Action. This event allowed youth to co-design a Live-Action Role Playing (LARP) game to showcase to their families and friends what they’d learned throughout the program. In addition, the day was meant to be a mobilizing effort of the broader community around direct actions that could be taken to support restoration efforts and engagement opportunities of the MLK Shoreline. At this event, MYN also co-created a ‘Resilience Village’, which was a resource fair of sister organizations intended to uplift and strengthen our local interdependence with movement partners.
Over the five month period, youth received over 58 total programming hours spread out across 28 days. MYN co-hosted four shoreline and habitat restoration activity days with Save the Bay, and contributed to the pick up of 371 pounds of trash, planting of 700 native western goldenrod & marsh gum plants, and pulling of 400 pounds of invasive weeds.
We here at Earth Rising now that for the participants in this program and their families and communities, the impacts go much further. Such intensive, careful programming helps develop youth in the leaders we need, ones capable of hope and reimagining our world.
To learn more about Mycelium Youth Network and their work visit their website here.