Rooted & Rising
This radical education program is designed to meet the urgent environmental and social crises faced by today’s youth and their communities. Led by Ph.D Candidate, Roxy Cohen, with support from Dr. Kate Tilleczek, Dr. Steve Alsop and a dedicated and multidisciplinary steering committee and team, the Rooted and Rising program will empower youth to take control over their lives, and our collective ways of living.
Background & Challenge
These are troubling times. Led by the demands of global youth, Canada and 24 other countries have declared a climate emergency. Youth have the passion and ideas to activate changes we need now; for ourselves, for future generations, and for the more-than-human world. Schools and our current methods of education have not equipped students to fully understand, cooperate or respond to this emergency as is needed. Rooted and Rising was envisioned and is led by a bunch of people and community groups, diverse in age, ancestry, experience, and education. The team is a combination of Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, all passionate about empowering young leaders. Now certified by York University, this program runs very differently than a typical university classroom and is open to all youth who are passionate about creating a better world for people and all living beings. Rooted and Rising is an action-based response to the global youth call to take this global Planetary Health crisis seriously.
Click front page to download 2020 Pilot Report
Outputs: Student Projects
Students self-organized into projects, activating a project together in the final month of the program. Expanding into the many ways leadership is embodied, students were supported in identifying their personal strengths, gifts, and passions and develop projects from there.
After hearing from our partner organizations in a panel they were encouraged to dream. In a 2- hour brainstorming sessions over zoom, students self-organized into project teams. Each week students had 45min in class to work on their projects and connected both in and out of class with teaching team members and our networks to help refine, network and accomplish their ideas.
The range of projects were beautiful, with many connecting to the work of our partners: Group 1 took up Mike Schreiner’s invitation to policy work and developed arguments to push for a youth council on climate change at the provincial level, as agreed to in the 1992 Rio Declaration. Group 2, inspired by Yannick (DSF)’s sharing on systems thinking, started to develop a simple computer simulation that helps people see the systemic connections in food system issues. Group 3, made up of artists, aspiring teachers and Conscious Minds Collective (@conscious_minds) members, developed a children’s book on respecting water. Group 4 created a journalism series featuring youth climate activists who do and don’t identify as activists. Group 5 created three stickers with illustrations of corn, caribou, and a canoe, to be plastered around the city calling attention to the life-forms and ways of being that used to thrive where the city stands now and could exist again. Group 6 focused on intergenerational healing through clay work in a private workshop with Filipina artists Tamara + Hilary, creating a video on the power & importance of making studio spaces accessible for BIPOC youth to create with Earth for healing. Group 7 worked with one member of the teaching team in their land restoration work outside the program – they planted 70 strawberry plants along the Humber River, and created a stopmotion video with a voice-over detailing strawberry teachings they received as they planted.
Group 5 – Stickering the New-Ancient City
Group 5 – Stickering the New-Ancient City
Group 5 – Stickering the New-Ancient City
Group 6 - Healing with Clay
Group 7 – Strawberry Teachings
Group 4 – Two Degree Youth Activist Spotlight Series
