In Panama kids are schooling their parents

And they're making their village a safer place to live

The beach was one of the dirtiest we’d ever seen. Mounds of plastic covered the sand, a film of oil residue covered the top of the water. I held the boys back, frustrated that we’d be told to journey to Santa Catalina, Panama to surf. This was not water I’d let my kids enter.

Irritated, we returned to our B&B. I was about to ask where it was safe to swim when I heard the cheering, the young voices, then a louder deep voice call them to attention. On the dirt road, dozens of schoolchildren crowded around a tall man.

Ayudanos a salvar a planeta verde (help us save our green planet), their signs read. Each carried a palm seedling. The aim, we learned later, was to reforest that dirty beach, reclaim what was theirs and protect it. Along the way, they sang, wide smiles stretched across their faces as if there was great joy in marching down that dirt road, their parents trailing behind them, these young people shouldering the burden of creating a better world.

As we marched alongside them, I also found out how in school the children started a recycling program for the town. Their art teacher told me that they even used materials that could not be recycled in art projects.

Each day, one of the kids told us, they were inspired to do something because it mattered to them. They weren’t being asked to take care of polar bears, or even the Amazon forest. They were simply seeing an issue in their community and set out to make it better for everyone.

And their parents were literally following them!

Letting them lead

Marching with those kids that day, I realized that I didn’t need to take my kids to see evidence of our ailing planet. That was all around us. I needed to inspire them. In this amazing TED Radio Hour podcast, activist Xiye Bastida talks about how adults are asking her how to parent. She argues that kids don’t know what to do. They need to work together with adults in this fight. We can’t just expect the kids to shoulder the burden of the inheritance we’ve left for them.

But, we also need to actively give them little sparks of hope, little successes, so that they believe we have a chance at a habitable future. And they see us actively involved.

Margaret Atwood says that hope is not this blind belief that the future will be brighter, but a choice.

Choosing Action

I asked the Panamanian kids’ art teacher Michele Miller, owner of La Buena Vida Hotel in town, what advice she had for parents and teachers wanting to spark interest in the kids. She took me into the classroom and showed me the art they’d made from non-recyclable materials, the same type of bottles we’d seen littering that beach, made into beautiful representations of their environment. Snakes and flowers, trees and ocean landscapes.

She then explained the kids didn’t know about recycling when she started teaching art at the school. She had to offer it as an option, and then they had the idealist perspective to help change their community by teaching their parents how to recycle.

In effect, she said, once they saw ways to fix the problems, it was easy for them to jump on board. You just have to start with what they’re interested in and what matters to them. And don’t make them feel they have to go at it alone.

This week’s action

I know the majority of you are parents and teachers. And some of you are students, grandparents, aunts, uncles. We all want to do something. We all want to find hope. And we all want to help young people find hope for their future.

This week we’re going to capitalize on that energy of youth, a time when we believe everything and anything is possible.

Remember, we’re not going to energize young people by talking at them or even, really forcing them to care. Rather, we’ve got to pay attention to what they care about to then help them harness that attention into action.

Here’s this week’s task. Pay attention to the young people around you.

Do they like video games? Give them the new climate change game Sin Sol by UCSC professor Donna Haraway.

Do they like to surf? Have them decide what’s important for their beach like the kids in Panama and invite them to do something, or better yet, show them people who are doing something and invite them to get involved.

Do they want to be coders? Check out this cool project to get coders into direct environmental action.

Maybe the youth community around you are like my kids and are all about sports. Easy task this week! Make sure to place athletes who are also activists and change-makers in their direct view.

Sometimes the most important action we can take is to show the people around us that we’re listening.

Like these weekly digests? Please share them with your community. We can’t do this work alone.

Until next week….