Action Briefing Dec 2005 - Jan 2006
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Nursing sprouts for another green generation

I've always enjoyed talking to people on the streets or holding stalls here and there. Maybe I’m a natural born chatterer! So when we were given the opportunity by Envision to do a workshop with teenagers at Millennium Point I jumped on the occasion.

In case you are wondering what 'envision' is, as I did the first time I first heard about them, the following may help. Envision is an educational charity that helps teenagers get involved in local projects. Making them more aware of community issues and challenging the stereotype of young people being all rascals that need to be dealt with by the authorities. Envision is funded by the government and recruits young people aged 16-19 in schools. The project was piloted in London and in the wake of its success is expanding to other areas and now Bimingham.

It's not to criticise but we don't have that many teenagers involved with Birmingham Friends of the Earth. An easy (and wrong) assumption would be that those aged 20 and less are not interested in the environment. Our interactions with the public generally tends to be more successful with older folk, it’s true. Teenagers tend, in my experience, to ignore you, and they are tough to convince. However, the little exposure I had revealed that they are generally more aware of the issues, and just need a catalyst for action.

Keen
The prospect of facing twenty teenagers with potentially no interest whatsoever in the environment is a daunting one, but we were assured by Mel Dipple from Envision that they would be keen. What spurred me on was that, I felt it was important to reach to young people. At the same time I felt that excitement I feel when I know I’ll be meeting new people or maybe the teacher in me was surfacing!

What did we do? Well, the first part was a classic introduction of what Birmingham FoE do. We then had a brainstorm-kind session where everyone had to shout out what waste is, what problems it causes and how we can solve it. Some were very knowledgeable regarding climate change and other issues. I was quite impressed, I must say. The second part was a role game involving FoE Xanaduland producing arguments to counter the XIC (Xanaduland Incineration Consortium) which had to respond to this criticism..

The overall feedback from the "not-so little monsters" who turned out to be in fact cool kids was positive-we we didn’t put them to sleep completely! It was a first time and we learnt a lot from that, so now we’re waiting for the next one! Big thanks to Mel from Envision for her support.

Nicolas Souroup