ROBYN HAMLYN is not the only student who has seen films documenting how bad practices in business and politics have led to water pollution, soaring prices, and very bad health effects, even in her water rich country of Canada. But Robyn has turned her shock into action! She joined a powerful coalition of experts and citizens who have crafted a solution to safeguard water aquifers and rivers and provide abundant clean water for generations to come. Robyn is their youngest speaker asking town councils to become ‘Blue Communities’ by passing legislation that water services stay public, banning bottled water, and making clean water a human right. Hold your seat: Robyn has already made several cities turn Blue! Now she is training kids and teens like you to be Water Warriors, able to protect their water for the future!

The one and only successful model to-date to create proper water stewardship. The trick is to do it at local / regional level, where decision-makers still feel connected to people and the environment, to paint the global picture and simple, robust, holistic solution, and youth as the messenger. This is extremely precious for a sense of empowerment in this troublesome matter, and shifting away from addressing polluters and abusers to simply focussing on the solution and anchoring it. Bam. The issue is super popular in schools around the globe, which enables introduction into our great daily hangout, to inform and involve thousands in petitions, as well as raising awareness about the super complex imprtance of water for everything in our lives with our Blue Schools model. A must-have for every school and city on the planet. How could it work without this? Do it!

View Robyn’s video, YL interview, website and the film Watch ‘World Water Wars’, the first film that awakened Robyn to act. Study the 3-pronged ‘Blue Communities’ Resolution on Robyn’s website, and on the Council of Canadians website. Get to know Maude Barlow and her credentials as a global leader on healthy, affordable water abundance for all. Browse further links and stories in our Water Collection to learn about the scope of cases, related causes and solutions. Spend special attention to the myths and facts on bottled water and water privatization, to water as a source of crisis, and of peacemaking, on international and local levels. Live a bottled beverage free week, and see how you survive. Be a boss and make it three or four weeks. Still alive? Really!? Keep it up. Off to real action at Level 2!

Join social media about water issues, support campaigns, share them on your social media. If you live in a country that considers tap water perfectly safe (usually any industrialized “developed” nation), cut bottled water from your diet, use a good reusable bottle instead. Consider using a filter for tap water. Test the effect of a Shungite stone (just a couple of dollars) on tap water (use a jug, leave for an hour, compare the water to water straight from the tap), which may be all you need. You can add other typical minerals like amethyst, quarz etc, as they do of course interact with the water. If your body sensors are intact, you may be surprised. Next, upgrade your school at Level 3.

Present on water and solutions at schools and events. Make your school a 21st century proof “Blue School”, implementing the resolution at school. Establish free tap water fountains. Listen: make them awesome! Give the fountain space appeal, add artwork, turn it into a co-creative learning environment – as a win win for you, your club, learning culture, and the planet. Add beauty, artwork, a twist of fun, change it monthly: involve clubs and subjects to (a) create artistic info on regional water sources, wetlands and habitats, the creepy crawlies keeping it healthy and alive, local and migrating wildlife thriving on it, and (b) water related issues and activities from our Hero/ines aka 3 UN Days of the Month). Over a year, everyone will be incredibly knowledgible, by simply processing these infos on-the-go! Next, protect water forever – proceed to Level 4.

Join Robyn’s Water Warriors network. Check your facts and presentation skills. Make your town council pass the 3-pronged Blue Community Resolution.

Take stewardship and legal protection to top level. Cast a protective web of law around Planet Earth by making Ecocide a Crime Against Peace at the International Criminal Court ICC and in national law. Meet YL Magicians Miriam Clements (Victory Law) and Polly Higgins , who advance the global legal framework for protec-ting life spheres, ecosystems, nature and its inhabitants against destruction, consequential conflict (loss of inner and outer peace) and mass death. Join campaigns warning and holding decision-makers causing ecosystem destruction and human mass suffering personally accountable.

A 9th grade class assignment inspired Jessie to draft an energy savings program for her school. The program used wood pellet heating, which now saves her school $90,000 per year! The news made waves, and stove sales jumped from a meager one to 1,000 a week! “Whenever I see you in the streets, I think of all the money I’m saving,” community members tell her. Hundreds of youth are replicating the program in other cities. State experts estimate potential annual savings for Vermont to be as high as $1.9 billion. “To me, being a child means running with all of your heart and soul after your wildest dreams, to run uninhibited, with understanding of the feelings in your heart, knowing what you are doing is good, and what you are doing will make things better.” Wow, we’ll take Jessie’s advice!

Do what Jessie did in grade 8 : study your regional energy situation and what kind of potential renewable energy sources exist. Share your findings in your group, with parents, groups in charge of making this transition and our online community. This helps us build up an exciting educational reosurce for schools and activist to research, driven by curiosity and playful learning. Make it good looking, using media, graphics, good texts and links to cool videos and organizations and resource pages. Yes, different languages are of interest!

Visit alternative energy movements in your region, interview and document the conversations. Where are they know, where do they wanna go, and what do they say about your research and findings? Document in photo, text, a casual positive news article! Share them with us for publication in YOUTH-LEADER Magazine and for our educational resources.

Is your region fit for a renewable energy source? Start a campaign involving everyone who shares and likes your goals! Harvest positive voices and share with media. Raise awareness in public, farmers markets, cafes, schools, at your city council, conferences, online etc. Share it with us, so we can get experts involved and help you.

Climate change resilient regions require holistic solutions for energy, food, water, natural resources etc., characterized by regional, interconnected, independent networks, multi-stakeholder collaboration, intergenerational learning, active citizenship, vibrant community, co-creative decision-making (participative governance) and more. Hence, take on your quest for soft, sustainable energy solutions from many angles. In combination, they can change attitudes, worldview, build momentum, alliances and get a tremendous lot of people involved!

• Make your school energy sustainable. No more fossils and nuclear.
• Lead campaigns to Divest from fossil fuels – asking cities, funds, universities, churches, institutions, banks. Connect with 350.org for this. View online media by Chloe Maxmin and Divest Harvard.
• Start a Green Fund, asking students to pay just $5+ more tuition per year, generating millions over the next years, allowing investment in renewable energies; your hero? Rachel Barge. She rocked hundreds of colleges! > Stop Fracking. Period.
• Make Ecocide a Crime against Peace by joining the global campaigns. View Polly Higgins’ Ted Talk and websites. This means creating a protective web of law around the planet. It needs to be done, so we might start right away. For the whole treat, view her interview.

Share your experiences with us, so the world sees the initiative unfold and can join forces with you rockstars!

CORAL is an 7-year-old unschooler and one-of-a-kind gal who is intensely passionate about health and nutrition. Feeling that school was boring and having ‘quit’ after first grade, Coral studies the world from home, and oftentimes yells at misleading food commercials on TV. It’s time you view Coralganics videos – teaching children about ingredients in common foods and helping them live healthier. Chick-fil-A’s looking fresh after 6 months? That’s disgusting, as are the ingredients! Watch her tell pediatricians off for recommending Flintstones vitamins and question Time Magazine and Dr. Mehmet Oz’s nonsensical claims that processed, canned foods were no different from fresh, organic foods! A healthy life is yours! Read food labels, question false ads, share knowledge, and, first of all – subscribe to Coralganics!

View her videos, reflect, research labels at home, in stores, share your experience among friends, parents and on our social media. What surprised you most?

Create a video on another yukky popular food, share online.

• TIP: Make it a class project!! You may come up with 10 videos in short time. How awesome! Then share them among all your social networks. You know they’ll love it, remember, spread the news, and get more people involved in creating videos. Let’s go viral!

Take a Lifestyle Challenge and make a daily post on our facebook stream with a photo and brief comment showing your breakthroughs and breakdowns. 4 Weeks for champs, 2 weeks minimum.

• “Life Without Palm Oil”

related to the experience of

• “4 Weeks of Vegan Living”
• “4 Weeks Without Supermarket”

A super exciting adventure!

Philanthro-Party! Organize a yum filled fundraiser, be it a magical bakesale, vegan treats, exotic lemonaids, a natural food party in a natural environment – and let’s donate our collective funds to one of 4 very special Orang Utan habitat protecting projects – you can choose your favorite!

Practically all palm oil production is tied to obscene human rights abuses, total rainforest ecosystem annihilation, species extinction, corruption and deception of the public. Calling fuel derived from this ecocide “biofuels” is truly no less than a crime against humanity, and so is putting this “sin” into every imaginable mushy stuff that no one really needs; sweets, sauces,  processed industrial pseudo-foods with long shelf-life). Despite the horrors being documen-ted and spread in mainstream media, nothing changes. Instead, it accelerates! This has to end! Step ahead to END consumption of these use-less, hurtful products, hold industry accounta-ble, enfore full sustainability for the tiny bit of palm oil that makes sense, by using the Action Kits of Madi & Rhiannon and Polly Higgins.

What’s the best thing about science, makerfaires and being in Malawi? To Lonjezo, it is the fact that creating stuff is fun and also serves society, making the entire country your playground! Lonjezo  early got actively involved in climate education, joined tree plantings, gave trainings, launched a radio show on environmental education and founded a school science club making phone networks using locally available resources. Inspired by 3-d printing, Lonjezo and his grown up friend Joseph are setting up a fablab at the capital city’s university, exploring low-tech development solutions for rural communities, like 3d-printed protheses, windmills for electricity, farming innovations etc. You, your school, and the maker community are invited to join in re-dreaming Malawi!

The windmill story is a cracker, everybody loves it. But no one has replicated it. As usual, the step from knowledge to action is beyond people. Crazy. We are changing this. And we do so by connecting with fun, entertaining, adventurous win-win activities and values that we all share : helping challenged communities – yes, our friends Lonjezo and Joseph are right into an extreme crisis of changing weatcher patterns and failing harvests affecting their people and families!!, maker stuff (yay!), creating a stunner in our own backyard and main street to make fresh headlines, fundraising and seeing an impact, and meeting the peops live and seeing success unfold as our FIELD PARTNER spreads such low-tech sustainability solutions throughout Malawi. Which is a nice country by the way. Let’s save that human and natural beauty and make it a model country, like Bhutan (going 100% organic and renwable), in its own ways.

View the videos, reflect and explore more about youth-powered electric windmills for remote villages, recycling and low-tech solutions for basic needs and sustainability. Share your experiences, surprises and ideas in your group and on social media; make sure to include links to cool useful stuff. Check out 3-d printed protheses, the price difference and different models. Spend good time realizing what difference it makes to have a simple windmill for a few bucks that generates electricity, even for irrigating the fields. And then make up your mind to help people get those! Are you ready?

This can be a very, very cool and magical endeavour. Imagine yourself projecting or even building such a trash windmill in your backyard, place it on a farmer’s market, pedestrian zone and get media and citizens involved? Will you take it to schools to start conversations and win partners for your massive fundraiser and – follow-up activities?

Create a windmill from trash, or another solution or cool tool. Share your achievements with us, media, schools and add meaningful activities for people to get involved, such as petitions for ending fossil fuels, divestment, and of course supporting our hero’ines abroad!

• Tip: Add awesome maker stuff like Elephant Toothpaste to your celebrations. Paper Rockets, too? Sure!

Set up a development partnership with Lonjezo & Joseph for bringing windmills to villages in Malawi, to set up a Fablab Makerspace and implement further low tech solutions. Meet “live” online, see success unfold, partaay!

• TIP: Will you visit them, document your experience, share it back home to scale the movement?

Here’s a cool introduction and an epic clip, featuring Madison Vorva, who also happens to be a world champion protecting rainforests, Orang Utans and cleaning up the ugly palm oil story (view Actions!). https://student.societyforscience.org/article/‘fablab’-brings-cool-science-tv. The epic Elephant Toothpaste experiment:

There’s a bunch more epic makerstuff that inspires us to think how we can create stuff that’s really meaningful for making a change to people’s lives.

• Videos: Sylvia – Rockets! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKmdeCvq_YM
• Mousey the Junk Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw08dC-RZ1g
• Sylvia – Backpack Buddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQOYsEcbumM
• Sylvia’s Maker Show: Paper Crafts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zklUOPXLcY
• Molding for toy replication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uNopuOBWoA
• Mini Maker Faire Sydney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN8uYDQHvpI
• Maker Faire 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yipp4C7fLiI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6BN1hWvCBM
• Barcelona Maker Faire 2013
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3RSgsy8kPs
• Mini Maker Faire Toronto 2011
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A8aifJ_-9Y
• The Mad Geniuses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJGfzCGRSG4

The Maker Movement is a fantastic phenomenon that’s taking on enormous proportions, also at schools. We really want to tap into the chance to use it for creating a better world. We can even create an own stream in the movement. So get involved and let’s get started using famous solutions and do what no one else yet did : simply copying, applying them where they are needed!

• the windmill built from trash or cheap materials
• created by youth
• starting a movement through the capital, villages, the entire country of Malawi, and even your community

We will also think of other cool stuff. Such as

• 3d printed protheses

and of course setting up a base

• setting up a Fablab in Malawi
• powered by youth and college students

This is one of the most fun and motivating approaches to development work we’ve ever seen, so let’s play it to the fullest!