Tuesday, July 01, 2008

BBTO sends young New Yorkers to Puerto Rico to connect with their heritage, explore the environment, and protect the planet!
By Jackie Ostfeld, National Youth Representative, BBTO

Penuelas, Puerto Rico

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting four students from New York City – three of them BBTO-ers from the Bronx Lab High School – in a small Puerto Rican mountain town called Peñuelas. The young Latinas were on the island to connect with their heritage, explore the outdoors and participate in a summer training co-hosted by the Sierra Student Coalition and the Building Bridges to the Outdoors project.

Just in time for summer, the New Yorkers sojourned to Puerto Rico to join about thirty Puerto Rican high school and college students for a training led by their peers. Throughout the week students learned valuable campaign skills, including how to organize, work with the media and educate legislators about environmentally responsible policies. They were visited by guests speakers, like Sierra Club’s own National Political and Public Advocacy Director, Cathy Duvall, and a PhD student from Rutgers who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and now specializes in Environmental Anthropology.

Throughout the week, the students got to explore some of Puerto Rico’s most unique community projects and natural areas, like the People’s Forest and Guanica Dry Forest. In Guanica, we saw the world’s tallest flower and a few of Puerto Rico’s endemic birds. Back on site, the BBTO-ers enjoyed some unstructured free time splashing around in the nearby creek. The Latinas from NYC were the first to brave the fresh and COLD water. Others soon followed, and before it was time to go, the students had self-organized into a clean, green, trash-collecting team.

It is so rewarding to watching a group of inner city-New Yorkers connect with Puerto Ricans from the island to enjoy and protect the environment. By the time they were ready to head back to New York City, the BBTO-ers were fired up to lead their own schools in the fight to protect the environment!