Climate Change & Sparking Change: Empowering Youth with Omesa Mokaya

This episode features an interview with Omesa Mokaya who leads Clean Water Action’s Youth Action Collaborative in Massachusetts. Omesa grew up in the Kisii highlands in Western Kenya where he witnessed firsthand the devastating impacts of climate change and made it a personal mission to help communities adapt to and enhance their resilience towards those impacts. Omesa’s work with the Youth Action Collaborative aims to empower the next generation of environmental leaders by providing them with organizing skills. The program supports youth from Environmental Justice communities who are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation. www.cleanwater.org/podcast

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The young people need to, for example, learn how to speak true to power. And that's something that we are doing with the Youth Action Collaborative is giving them these skills that they need. For example, writing letters to the editor and testifying, for example, in Congress and during policymaking sessions, and even things like speaking up, going to the streets and preaching the message of hope like we do. And some of the things actually boil down to an individualization, for example, what you do on a day-to-day basis because every little action that you take makes a big impact because if everyone does that, then it ends up to making that great impact in the world. Hello everyone. Welcome to We All Live Downstream, a Clean Water Action podcast. In each episode, we will be interviewing leading environmental and their work in the field. We'll dive deep into topics from drinking water and climate change to environmental justice, plastic pollution, and toxic chemicals. I'm your host Jenny Vickers, the National Communications Manager for Clean Water Action. Today we are going to focus on climate change and sparking change and to talk about how youth activists are making a difference in creating a livable climate future. We are so thrilled to welcome our guest to the show, ESA mackay Clean Water Actions Youth Engagement program who does absolutely incredible work for our Youth Action Collaborative. We'll get into that later. Oesa has a fervent passion for environmental and He's deeply committed to addressing issues that afflict environmental justice and underserved communities at the front lines of climate change. ESA grew up in the Kei Highlands in western Kenya where he witnessed firsthand the devastating impacts of climate change and made it a personal mission to help communities adapt to and enhance their resilience towards those impacts. Welcome to we all Live downstream. I'm so happy to have you here. Hi Jenny. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Me too. I'm excited to get to know you more and hear your story. But before we get started, I want to know more about your background. I know I just mentioned you grew up in Western Kenya growing up there, and what brought you to Massachusetts? Tell us a little bit more about you. Yeah, thank you so much. As you likely mentioned, I grew up in the Kissey Highlands in western Kenya, so this is where I was born and raised. So I mean it took environmental studies first of all in undergrad when I joined college because at first I want lights because it was my first choice, but it was because I ran out of options. I wanted to become a doctor growing up. But then after high school, I didn't get the grades to take me to med school and my parents and my family, most of my family members wanted me to be a teacher because I was good at English literature, but then I hated teaching. So full disclosure, I didn't like to be a teacher. So I chose environmental studies because at the time that's the only option I could get. But going into college and taking the first couple of semesters, I ended up liking it because then I got to read about things like this. I read a book called The Silent Springs by Rachel Kason, and then slowly began to put a little pieces together because growing up in the Kissey Highlands, I could see some of the changes that were happening over time. So I began to understand what it exactly means and began to studying environment. First of all, from taking it as a career, I ended up starting to like it and wanting to become part of the solution because I could see that something was happening and my community was impacted, and I could hear stories about my mom talking about the crop productivity from one season to another season going down. And after that moment, I could easily relate back and know what is happening is because something was clearly changing and that was impacting things like food insecurity in the community where I come from. So what brought me to Massachusetts is after practicing that for some time in Kenya and helping communities, especially in adapting to the impacts of climate change for a couple of years after my graduation from undergrad, I decided to come back to grad school. So I came to grad school here in Massachusetts where science and policy from Clark University, and my concentration was in climate change impacts and adaptation. That's very fascinating. Yeah, I think it sometimes takes a while to figure out exactly where you're going to be. I was in nursing school, a nursing school dropout, but so I did that for a while and I found my passion for the environment and it ended up getting my grad degree as well as environmental studies. So yeah, sometimes it takes a minute, but I'm glad you made it here and now you're working at Clean Water Action. I can't wait to hear all about your work, but what was the original, you mentioned climate and where you grew up and everything like that, but becoming an activist and really speaking out and dedicating your life to this, there's got to be, what is that spark that sparked your passion for activism? Yeah, like I mentioned, going to college and getting to clearly understand what was happening because studying environmental studies, you get to understand the range of issues and get to clearly relate to what is happening around the world. And we face what the United Nations called triple planetary crisis. We see things like pollution, whether it's water pollution or air pollution, and coupled with things like climate change and biodiversity laws, and when you put all these together and couple them with poverty because most of the communities where I come from grew up in poverty and seeing a lot of social injustices that are going on across the world, it's something that gives you that motivation to want to become part of that. And what triggered me most was having an understanding of this and seeing the government in action because most of the governments are not really doing what they're supposed to do to address some of these issues or issues that bedevil our societies and communities like myself where I come from. So I saw most of these impacts firsthand, climate change for instance, or water shortage or drought and the certification affecting or impacting food productivity and hence leading to food insecurity. So some of those issues led me to want to speak up because I saw a case in Kenya, for instance, where governments are colluding with multinational corporations through public private partnerships to, for example, move the agriculture value chain towards industrial agriculture, which is more geared towards putting profits in the pockets of the few corporations at the expense of multiple and majority populations, which are small scale farmers. So having worked with small scale farmers, for example, in lower eastern parts of Kenya, that's where I started my career working in addressing food insecurity and the impacts of climate change and seeing how the farmers are suffering, how the small scale farmers who make the majority, for example in Kenya, over 70% and the government in action, that sparked that interest in me to want to speak out. I sometime went into the streets to demonstrate against the government's actions and getting to understand that people need these kind of actions that are policy actions that are made by government officials or public officials. That is something that brought out that spark in me to want to speak up, to want to make a change in the environment and what is happening across the planet in terms of addressing all these issues that we're facing. And it's only going to get worse without action. So I mean, one of the most important things we can do is take action. And when I look at the global climate movement, you see so many youth rising up and forming groups and and I hope our government starts to listen. We really have to act now on climate. I mean all the signs are there and we know what to do. So I just want to talk a little bit about your work. I mentioned Youth Action. This is a focus on youth action in this podcast and climate. So Cleanwater Action is partnering with Malden High School in Massachusetts for our 2024 Youth Action Collaborative. It's a leadership development program. Can you tell me more about your work with the collaborative and share some of your goals? Yeah, thanks. Like you mentioned, I work as a youth engagement program manager where I oversee first of all the internship program at Greenwood Action in Massachusetts and the Youth Action Collaborative, which is the youth development program or youth leadership program school. The first pilot we started was in Malden High School. And this is an afterschool program where we meet with students after they're done with their school day once a week for the whole semester, and we go through sessions and we have basically the aim of this is to nurture and empower the next generation of leaders with the skills, the prerequisite skills they need in their organizing journey. And we do this organizing around, it's basically based around the issues that we can at Clean Water Action ranging from climate justice to zero waste campaigns and to lead in drinking water and toxics like pfas and pfas. For those who don't know, it's a short form for an acronym for and poly substances, which are harmful chemicals that cause a lot of environmental challenges and also health impacts to communities. So those are some of the things that we are addressing at Clean Water. And most of what we are doing at the Youth Action Collaborative is empowering the young people with some of the skills to organize around these issues. And apart from that, we also empower them with organizing skills such as Strategic one-on-ones skills such as public speaking, power mapping, digital organizing, all these because they are important or fundamental skills for any social justice or environmental justice organizer. And for young people in high school, because these are some of the things, like I mentioned, I didn't know much about environment when I was in high school until I got to college. So getting to understand that the young people, because these are the next generation, this is generation that is going to be impacted the most. So it really makes sense for them to be empowered with some of those skills. So the Youth Action Collaborative Program is really more of a program. It's not just a program. It's a movement that we're creating of these young kind of future environmental leaders. And some of the goals is that ultimately with all this semester long program, what we look at is something called YPR, which is the Youth Participatory Action Research Project that the young people get to design from designing to implementation. They become a part of it and they own it. And I know they get to practice this and share a part of what they have learned in their communities. For instance, the first semester what we did is the young people used some of the knowledge they had learned from the guest speakers that we brought in to talk about some of these issues, put in practice some of the skills they had learned, like digital organizing and public speaking, to speak up against what is happening in their communities because some of them can actually understand and they know what is happening and they know that they need to do something. So that's really the ultimate goal is to have them take that hands-on experience, on designing and implementing a project of their own in the community. That's wonderful. And it's a perfect location with cleanwater action too, because you have so many offices and staff up there and they could see work in action. You mentioned PFAS, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, all have PFO S bills, some of which have passed. Congrats. So I just think it's cool they actually see success, which is. Inspiring. So. Just to mention one quick thing is that we targeting these young people and Molden High School is based in an environmental justice community. So these are people who are disproportionately impacted by impacts of environmental pollution or environmental degradation. So that's why we are targeting most of these young people from those communities because they impacted more than other communities from other affluent neighborhoods. And I think providing additional resources for them to have a voice at the table, just making them understand that power, I think it's awesome. I mentioned seeing success in action, so I just was curious to know what's one of your favorite success stories that you've experienced working on this program? Given that this was our first pilot project, and this is the first project I embarked on since I joined Clean Water. So first of all is the successful launch of the program at Moen High School. Initially we were targeting and recruiting eight students, but then when we shared the application form and we saw the overwhelming response from students applying, we got an overwhelming application from the Moen High School students. So we doubled that number from eight to 16 and overseeing that program from the first, the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. That was one of the most successful stories that I can tell about the program. And also getting to see the young people practice exactly what they were learning during the program, practicing some of those skills during the World Asthma Day, we had one of the young people from the Youth Action Collaborative who was among the keynote speakers of the event, the World Asthma Day celebration that we held in Roxbury in Massachusetts, and she gave this captivating speech in form of a poem that everyone found it so inspiring. Just a side note, you could read that on our blog clean water.org/blog in its entirety. That poem is very powerful. Go ahead. Sorry. I just wanted to let people know if they can actually read her poem on our website. Yeah, yeah, it is. And if it helps, I'd also like to mention that we are honoring these students. We at the fall celebration that will be hosted on 25th of September. So this young person is, some of this is exemplary of the success stories that we seeing from young people come to their program. And another thing that I call a success is that we successfully launched a youth podcast series called The Voices of the Future because we are targeting, these are going to be the voices of the future because the future generation. So we started a podcast series that airs on my podcast called the Climate Voices Podcast. So we interviewed or had conversations like the one we are having today with four young people and it's live. We this shared some of the stories and what they have learned from the Youth Action Collaborative and hearing some of them sharing the experiences up in their communities and how they have seen changes over time and how they have always wanted to be part of coming up with the solutions and getting this program, giving them that opportunity to practice it. It's one of the success stories that I feel proud of sharing. Yeah, I've listened to them. You should be proud. Very awesome. Check it out. That's actually what I was going to say next is that I'm very excited to have you on Cleveland Actions Podcast finally. Finally, we've been talking about it for a while, but you're a fellow podcaster, and so in 2021, I read that in graduate school at Clark, you founded the Climate Voices podcast. So just tell us more about your podcast, why you started it, and I know you mentioned some of the recent guests, but just let us know a little bit more about it and how folks can. Listen. Yeah, so one thing that I realized is that across the world, everyone really understands what is happening. People can tell that something is different. We are facing all these issues of food insecurity. We are facing energy, poverty are facing water shortage, all these impacts of climate change happening around the world coupled with other issues such as pollution and war and everyone. And what I realized is that everyone is actually trying to come up with solutions. So we are all trying to address some of these issues, but the problem is that we are all doing it in a siloed manner. So I realized that we need to have that kind of conversations and break all these silos because these are some of the issues that affect us after humanity. So it makes sense if we all came together and collaborate to come up with a solution. So the podcast, I started it as a form of trying to break those silos by bringing together different people, addressing these challenges that we are facing from different perspectives. We have climate activists like myself who've been ticketing in the streets and raising our awareness and demonstrating against governments. We have scientists on the other hand who have been coming up with all this information like you mentioned before, is that the science is clear. But the problem that we have is that there's a lot of scientific jargon that not every common person understands. And we have all these professors and researchers and these amazing findings, but no one really understands them and especially people like policy makers who need to use the science to come up with policies that impact our communities on a positive way. So the aim of this podcast was to be that platform that brings all these people together to first of all start having conversations like the one we are having now, so that we all get to understand what exactly is happening and how each of us can play a part in addressing these challenges that we are facing. So that's how I started it. And as a way of also amplifying the voices of, for example, the people who have been addressing this and no one really knows what they're doing because one thing I've realized over time is that the mainstream media doesn't find some of these stories captivating enough, so they're not shared enough on mainstream. So for instance, is one great avenue or platform to amplify some of the voices of those people who have been leading and championing change that we want to see in the community. Yeah, I think it's a wonderful podcast. It gives voice to different people from different parts of the world to share their stories on how they're addressing the impacts of climate change. Clean Water Actions podcast was started during the pandemic as a way to share our story of all the different activists that work at Clean Water Action because very diverse community across the country, different states, big focus on environmental justice, climate change, water pollution. And so yeah, it's a similar idea. It's like the more you hear about it and talk about it, the more it breathes life into, sorry, my dog is barking, so I dunno if you can hear, but that's my dog. So we love to share stories and so today we're sharing your story and you share other people's stories. So I feel like there's this great interconnection here right now. So I know you've chatted with a lot of people on your podcast, but can you share one story that was inspirational for you? I know you already shared one earlier, but is there another person you talked with that's been inspiring? Can you share that? Actually, it's pythons because there still, there's this one episode that I still find very captivating up until now is what I call a fireside conversation or chat that I had with a few of my classmates or former colleagues at grad school. So we used to hang out in the evenings and have a conversation about what we think is happening because backgrounds and we have different experiences despite all the diversity in our upbringing and our experiences and the things that we have faced because in grad school, some coming from different parts of the world and some coming from different parts from here in the US and some of them have actually served in Peace Corps in other countries across the world and seen some of these impacts firsthand. But one thing I noticed from that is that despite all these differences is the recognition that we are all united by wanting to bring change and wanting to address the same impacts that are facing our planet. And this young people, this group of young people recognize what is happening and given the inaction from the earlier generations and how it's impacting us now and how the impacts are going to keep increasing if we don't do anything now. So we address that topic that is, we don't get to talk about most a topic called climate despair, climate anxiety, and a lot of young people and how a lot of young people are feeling hopeless given that seeing a lot of these, like I mentioned before, government in action. And it leaves young people dealing with all these issues. And when they're all coupled at once, you see what is happening around the world. Things like war and conflicts and things like food insecurity, energy poverty and the certifications and drought where come from when you see all these things as a young person and you're supposed to be thinking of a hopeful future, sometimes you feel hopeless, you're like, is there even a point of living? But when I had this conversation with these young people and each of them recognizing that and it's impacting their day-to-day life, and one thing we did is to ask ourselves then. So that's where it got interesting because then what we talked about is that we need to change the conversation and shift the narrative from the desperation and the anxiety towards preaching hope. And that's the one thing that I've seen young people doing at the moment is preaching the message of hope, moving away from hopelessness and saying that we need to act. Because I remember it's President Obama, I think in one of the conference of parties who said that we are the last generation to face the actual impacts and the real impacts of climate change. And we are the last one. We are the last one that actually needs to act to address some of those impacts. So the young people are rising across the world and doing that. And this episode that we had with the young people is agreeing to address their anxiety and hopelessness and preaching the message of hope. Yeah, I think it's very important to do. And you mentioned you started, you didn't learn about this until college. And so this program starting in high school, and I think even younger to an extent, kids are starting to really think about it. I have a five-year-old, she talks about garbage and pollution. I mean, you're hearing about it more and more at younger, at a younger age. I mean, I work for an environmental group, so she hears about it from me, but I don't want her to have anxiety. And you mentioned the climate crisis is real, it's not going away and it's getting worse. And it's incredibly frustrating for our youth to see that, to be honest. And you said that there should be a message of hope, and I think that's super important. So what advice, if there is any young people listening right now, so what advice can you give them to get more involved and not feel hopeless? What can they do in their own community? Yeah, so in my studies, there's something I learned called the shifting baseline syndrome. This is where you find each generation when they're brought up, they see what is happening and they think it's the normal and don't really put into consideration what has been happening in the past in terms of environmental degradation and perceive what is happening today as the normal and whatever actions we take going forward, we best today as the new normal, which shouldn't actually be the case because then it becomes so problematic because then we don't really put into account the past historical records of what has been happening and how devastating the impacts of human activity has been over the past during, for example, from industrialization. And one thing that this leads to the young people, for instance, thinking like you mentioned, is some of them actually hear from like yourself. You say you have a 5-year-old who hears, you talk about some of these issues over time, and she really gets to understand what is happening. But when we watch some of these stories, and technology has played a big part in this because young people are seeing all these stories on the internet, is that they think it's actually a new normal and they don't feel this much that needs to be done. So like I said, this kind of situation becomes so problematic because then we become complacent of what is happening and don't feel that we need to do much to address some of these impacts. So we actually do need to look at the historical challenges of what has been happening, of all the degradation that has happened, of all the impacts of climate change that for example, we have seen. And the only way we can do this is because the people who are putting us in this situation is actually the people who are in power now. So the young people need to, for example, learn how to speak true to power. And that's something that we are doing with the Youth Action Collaborative, is giving them these skills that they need. For example, writing letters to the editor and justifying, for example, in Congress and during policymaking sessions and even things like speaking up, going to the streets and preaching the message of hope like we do. And some of the things actually boil down to an individual decision, for example, what you do on a day-to-day basis, because every theater action that you take makes a big impact because if everyone does that, then it ends up to making that great impact in the world. And one thing I usually say to young people is things like, for example, using a recyclable or reusable water bottle, for example, it helps a lot towards cutting down plastic pollution because plastics are the ones among the things that increasing the carbon footprint that we see in the atmosphere at the moment. So that one action, one little action that you do, or tech, for example, just switching off the faucet once you're done using the water or anything like that, it leads a lot towards conservation of our natural resources. So also preaching the message of hope, like I said, with the young people that I had conversations with have also interviewed had these conversations with, on my podcast, they have talked about this message of hope. So what I like to say is that it's not all lost. We can actually, there's a lot of hope and we can actually do something. It only comes down to an individual decision of what you can do and what everyone can do. And together we can make a big impact. I totally agree. And if you're interested in our work on plastic, actually, because you just mentioned that we do check out rethink disposable.org, those are simple, but big, big ways to make an impact on reducing plastic pollution by just reusing and reducing, if we all did it, make a huge impact on our carbon footprint because plastic production relies on the oil and gas industry. So we've talked a lot about some heavy topics and your work, your activism, but if people are out there listening and want to get to know you more, it's fun to know what are some of your hobbies or things that you like to do for fun. It can't just all be work. What are some of the things that you enjoy doing outside of work? Yeah, they say all work and no play makes Jack dull boy in this instance. I'll say all work, no play makes or mess adult boy. And I don't want to be adu boy because there's a lot of dull moments in the world already. So other than that, I do photography. I'm a photographer. I have an Instagram page called Photography. I do that for fun, going out and taking pictures of great scenes and taking pictures of friends. I also love blogging. I believe it's not out of work, but it's about putting out the message of what's happening around the world and preaching the message of hope, actually. So I have a blog goal or me world where I share my views, everything that I share, it's totally my views on what I think about various topics around, especially climate change and food security and renewable energy and all that. And I also like listening to audio books and watching movies. Nice. And having great conversations. I like to call it having engaging in intellectual conversations. That's how I ended up studying a podcast because of some of these conversations. That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm envisioning O Mesa World YouTube channel, just saying. I actually have a YouTube channel, but for the podcast, not for Theesa world, but it's. For the, yeah, no, like a show. Future. Goals, future goals. Speaking of future goals, what are some of your goals for the future besides your own aesa world show on YouTube? Yeah, given that having learned what I've learned for this time that I started being involved in the environmental conservation journey, I know I haven't had all the experience, but I know I've learned enough to be able to pass it down to the younger generation. So I look forward to keeping empowering the young people because these are the future generations. I want to see my children's children and their children, so I want to make sure that they are a better planet for them. So I want to keep empowering these young people in terms of speaking up and addressing some of these issues and also making the world a better place because there are some issues that I saw while I was up energy poverty and food insecurity in my community. And I will love to see my community out of that. So I do whatever it takes to make sure that not just my community, but my country and other people even here in the US who face some of the same circumstances or situations like the ones I grew up in before in Kenya. Well, that's wonderful, wonderful work that you're doing, and I don't know how you do it all, but it's incredible. So we are clean water action. We always like to end our podcast with a call to action. So putting the action in our name right now, elected leaders are making decisions that will impact our climate future right now. Maybe there's some listening. So mea, how can we make sure our voices are heard? What's a call to action today that you have? Yeah, luckily enough here in the US we are in the election year period, we are electing political leaders or leaders would be speaking up on our behalf. So the only way for us to make our voices heard, first of all, I like to say this, especially for the young people who have gotten to the age of 16 and they're able to vote, is to practice your civic duty. Go out and vote. This is how you make your voice heard elect and not just vote, but also vote for the people who protect, who fight in, for example, in some of these spaces, to fight to protect the water we drink or the air we breathe or the environment we live in. Vote for the people who are environmentally conscious. And one last thing is that speak up. Don't keep quiet because your voice matters. Testify in Congress. Write blogs like what I do. Share your thoughts, write letters to the editor. If you have an issue that you think is happening in your society, in your city, write to the edit and tell them there's something that you have noticed that you like to be addressed. Because as a constituent, you can even make calls to your representatives. I've made calls to the state senator here in where I live in Massachusetts. And talk to them about an issue that you want them to address. And also to continue conducting civic education and talking to those who don't understand what we are doing. Continue spreading that message of hope and making sure that we are holding our elected leaders accountable because as they say, the voices of the people is the voice of God, and it can only be the voice of God if we choose, right? So make sure we choose the right people and speak up. Don't keep quiet. Whatever it takes. Always speak up for what you think is right. Yes. Definitely. Definitely. And you mentioned election year, Cleanwater action has made a bunch of endorsements across the country. You can go to cleanwater.org and check that out. We also have a lot of nonpartisan, helpful information for your state on how to vote, when to vote, important dates, endorsements, like I said in the presidential race. We've endorsed the Harris and Waltz campaign, so you can check out all of the information about that. We're very excited about this election year and we need everyone voting. I always say too, to young people, run for office, become an elected official. Maybe start small in your community and work your way up. So we need more people like us in office. So that's another thing I always like to ride from. And well, thank you so much, ESA, for being here. And thank you for your activism and your work in inspiring our next generation of climate leaders. Thank you for sharing your story. You're truly an inspiration to so many people. If you'd like to support our podcast, visit clean water.org/podcasts and click on support. Our podcast. Our podcast journey is made possible by you, our amazing listeners. Your support is vital to keep our episodes engaging, informative, and enjoyable. And with your help, we can continue to grow, innovate, and bring you more of the content you love. Be sure to check out on Mesa's podcast, you could just search the Climate Voices podcast, and it's available on all the streaming platforms as is we all live downstream on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, et cetera. So Mea, thank you so much for joining. Anything else you want to add before we sign out today? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great to have this conversation with you. And to everyone who is listening, please hope and let's all do what we can. Thank you so much. Thank you.