TA News

Guest post by Hanae Debo, Class of 2025

The annual Youth Climate Leadership Academy (YCLA) is hosted by the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) and the New Hampshire Energy Education Program (NHEEP) at Hulbert Outdoor Center in Fairlee, VT. It is a two-day event in which high school students from NH and VT come together to create a project for climate action at their schools, meet other young people who are passionate about the environment, learn relevant skills in climate advocacy, and this year, play in the snow!! 

Thetford Academy Climate Alliance (TACA) attended last year for the first time and we worked on increasing the TA Garden’s crop yield to make meals to serve in the Panther Café using our culinary program run by Mrs. Gernhard. The purpose of doing this was to decrease TA’s dependence on produce that comes from across the country, as this process is highly CO₂ intensive. 

This year, TACA entered the event with a nebulous idea of what we wanted to work on. We thought we could focus on another garden-related project, but the roadblock we faced with this was a lack of student involvement. If we want to serve tomatoes from our garden at the school’s salad bar, we need help growing those tomatoes, which we were struggling to find. To address this issue, we decided to offer an alternative curriculum for the existing Panther Fridays that would involve built-in time for students to work and be outside once a week. TACA will continue to work on this for the rest of the year (more to come on that soon!).

This year, I decided to return to YCLA as a Youth Climate Fellow. This is a position created specifically for students who are both interested in leadership and climate action. Being a fellow involved both event planning and assuming a leader position during the weekend. Along with Bea Dapice (Hopkinton, ’27), I made announcements, led groups in team bonding games, and made many connections with local youth climate activists. I was also still able to work with the other members of TACA who attended, Omi Malin-Stremlau (’27) and Kit Payson (’27).

While I began the weekend feeling nervous about my leadership capabilities, especially with such a large group, I very quickly picked up both skills and confidence. Like last year, I met new people, learned new tactics for climate action, ate great food, and laughed a lot. This year, I experienced all those things, but also gained confidence in my leadership skills that I hadn’t previously had.

Climate change is undoubtedly a scary, stressful, and overwhelming thing to think about. No matter how hard we may try to block it out, it is not an issue we can simply put off—it’ll come rushing back in the form of a flood to remind us. This being said, finding hope is crucial to fight the fight against climate change. What YCLA has taught me is how much hope collaboration provides. No single person can solve a global issue on their own, but as soon as we begin to work together and genuinely listen to one another, then all the impossible problems suddenly become much more possible.