EJ Changemakers know that structural change drives, and will heal, the environmental crisis. They are informed on how government, business, and social structures are the primary drivers of the environmental crisis, and envision how to revise and reimagine them to restore environmental justice. 

EJ Changemakers make informed choices in their day-to-day routines to sustain and regenerate our planet, while also acknowledging that individual-level choices are necessary but insufficient to restore environmental justice. 

EJ Changemakers have strategies and dispositions to healthily manage the complex, challenging work of changemaking.

I felt that our school community was the perfect environment to catalyze systemic sustainable change. Our school coffee company is one of the most popular student activities to be apart of, and it is frequented by students and faculty every week. With the help of our club L.E.A.F. (which I am a co-leader of), we were able to transition the company from using single-use plastic cups to compostable cups and incentivized usage of reusable cups. We also launched a collaboration with them to write letters to coffee companies and politicians advocating for greener business models and limitation of single-use plastic. Our most recent project in collaboration with OCC is our sustainable merch endeavor, in which we used 100% second hand materials (found in our local thrift stores) to design unique sweatshirts, tees, and sweatpants sold by the coffee company.

As part of L.E.A.F. (Laurel's Environmental Action for the Future Club), we took on a school-wide initiative to make our school more sustainable. This included completing a waste audit or sifting through one day of trash, food waste, and recycling from our entire school to determine how much our waste our school was contributing daily, how many materials were mismanaged, and how we could improve. In addition to this, we developed a partnership with an industrial composting facility (Rust Belt Riders) to take on our food waste and established a way for families to bring their compost from home to school. 

Our cohort brought old clothes that were torn or needed mended and learned how to stitch them up with artful designs and recycled fabric. Learning this skill would enable us to reuse clothes that we otherwise would have thrown away and not participate in the wasteful consumption of fast fashion. The creative stitching was an outlet to spread an artistic message in addition to being sustainable.

I gave a presentation on the protests in Atlanta concerning the destruction of the South River forest to build a 90 million dollar police training center. This research educated me on the systematic oppression going on behind the scenes of the project. I learned of the donations being made to the project and the people being suppressed in the process. I then posed the question, "why do you think gas or fast food corporations are donating to a project such as this?" I hoped to provoke thought on how power reinforces injustice. 

I completed a training with Leave No Trace, a program that certifies individuals as stewards of the natural world. Within it, I learned practices of how to interact with natural spaces to diminish my human impact. This has guided my principles on sustainability.

Each day of our semester, we opened the day by leading a community building circle to center ourselves in our mission for the day, connect with each other, and provide a moment of peace or catharsis in the midst of our work. I had the opportunity to lead one of these circles a couple months ago, and I read the poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo which relate to the tables we make the world at with our friends and family. After asking my peers to reflect on the piece, I asked them if they could share a significance instance that food or a kitchen table brought a community together. 

My classmate and I prepared a presentation on redlining that greatly deepened my understanding of systematic racism and oppression. The research we did illuminated how policies from the New Deal Era have affected communities of color and lower income communities systemically through healthcare, community investment, and environmental inequities. 

Nature observation strengthens skills that are both necessary in change making work and personal well-being. Outside on the Butler campus, our cohort observed the natural world quietly and journaled all of the things we noticed and felt. This restored my connection to the mission of my work and allowed me to sink deeper within my purpose and identity.