Climate Action Pursuit 2021

Click VIDEO STREAM to watch the recording of this session.

In this session participants will hear from Elsa Mengistu, a strategist and visionary within the environmental movement, as she shares stories highlighting youth and college activism and empowerment, how and where to get engaged, and the need for intersectionality and multifaceted solutions in the sustainability and higher education sectors. Mengistu is the Cultural Development and Outreach Specialist and Founding Member at Generation Green, a student pursuing a degree in Political Science at Howard University, and the former Director of Operations at This is Zero Hour, a global grassroots climate organization intent on gaining support for the Youth Climate Movement.

Some key takeaways from this session:
In this session, through narrative storytelling based on her lived experience, Elsa Mengistu shares:

• What led her to learn about white fragility and the importance of educators that care about their students and uplifting marginalized voices;
  
• Through her organizing work, how she has worked to address systems of oppression including colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and mass incarceration, and how layers of experience within these systems give individuals a unique perspective that should be highly valued and listened to;
  
• As a student at Howard University, ways she has seen environmental racism play out inside and outside of the classroom, what higher education is doing right, and how to get engaged and make higher education institutions more intersectional, equitable, and inclusive.