Season 2, Episode 28: Jess

Join hosts John Whidden and Jess LeBlanc as they discuss empowering youth and educators to take meaningful climate action through the 'N:OW for net-zero' initiative. Hear inspiring success stories, tips for impactful advocacy, and the importance of community-driven solutions. 

00:00 Introduction and QuickFix

01:03 Meet Jess LeBlanc and FES

01:37 N:OW for Net-Zero: Empowering Schools

03:17 Success Stories and Impact

05:28 Application Process and Support

07:23 Government Involvement and Future Vision

13:55 Youth Harbour: Supporting Young Climate Organizers

15:57 The Power of Storytelling

19:03 Women in Climate Action

21:52 Personal Reflections and Advice

25:59 Conclusion and Farewell

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Transcript

Jess: 0:00

hi everybody. I'm Jess LeBlanc, and you are tuned into Climate Action Figures.

John: 0:14

Hello, and welcome to a fresh edition of Climate Action Figures. My name as always is John Whidden, and this week on the show you get to meet Jess. But first this week's QuickFix. This comes to us from Linda in California who shared a couple of items from the Living Desert Magazine. It sounds like a very cool place. Ditching beef trims your carbon footprint more than giving up your car. Fields used to grow animal feed could provide food for an extra 3.5 billion people if repurposed, and vegan and vegetarian diets are associated with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any diet. So thanks Linda, for sending those in and welcome Jess. What do you think about that QuickFix?

Jess: 1:06

Yeah. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I, I love this QuickFix. I'm, I'm a vegetarian myself. Um, I also, we, we mostly ditched the car. We, we, we luckily live in a bike city, so myself, a lot of my family members here, my partner, we all bike. All over this place. So yeah, I think, I think it's always a good reminder to let people know too, that you don't have to go full Turkey. You can, you can also just do plant-based partially, um, even just mixing in a few more plant-based meals into your week can make a really big difference.

John: 1:36

onto you, Jess, you are program director with the organization, FES or Finance, Engage, Sustain. And it has two parts that we're gonna talk about today. One of those that you, I think you work more closely with is N:OW for net-zero. Is that right?

Jess: 1:52

Yeah, exactly.

John: 1:53

Okay, we're looking at the landing page right now, and in case you're listening to, but Not watching the podcast today, it says: empowering students and educators with the resources they need to explore and implement meaningful climate action in pursuit of net zero. So Jess tell us how this all got started.

Jess: 2:11

I've been kind of leading this project for the past two years and basically what happened was actually the government of Canada came to us, um, and they said, Hey, we see you FES, we know you do really cool, important work with youth. We know you are youth organization yourself. Um, and they said, we're trying to get Canadian families more engaged with this conversation around net zero. Nobody knows what the heck it is. Nobody knows what it means. And we're trying to make sure that Canadians understand what kind of reducing emissions can look like in their communities. What would you do about this if we were to help support you with some money behind it? So we kind of came up with this idea because. FES. We are a youth led organization. We're youth serving, and the biggest thing we always try to do is just build capacity for youth to do the cool stuff that they're already doing. We see a lot of youth, we see a lot of green clubs in schools. We see a lot of teachers wanting to take on project-based learning, and we thought. What if we could kind of empower students and educators in schools with some money to be able to do project-based learning through some kind of a project that would reduce emissions in their school.

John: 3:17

Now that you've shared that aspect of, of what you do there, uh, you probably should share some of the success stories, some of the projects that come to mind right away for you.

Jess: 3:26

Oh my gosh. I, I love this project so, so much. We've got a few things. I I definitely recommend people check out the, the website'cause we have some stuff that are just resources, like lesson plans for teachers. If you wanna figure out how to bring in solutions about climate into your classrooms. We've got curriculum linked lesson plans, we've got resources for projects. But one of the other things you can find on our website is the Solutions Stories library, and this is where you will find 31 different solutions stories from students in schools across Canada where they were trying to do emissions reduction. So we primarily were trying to support rural communities, remote communities, and indigenous communities. So you'll see a bunch of them there. But some of these stories are so cool, like some schools in like rural Alberta, new they took our funding, they went to their local government and said, Hey, we got somebody that's willing to put some money in the pot. Can you put some money in the pot? Because we wanna get a really, really big solar panel array. And they did it. They got multiple sponsors. The thing is massive. There's a really cool picture online. We've had other schools, like in New Brunswick, there's one school where they were like in a tech class. And the teacher's like, I got a bunch of students that wanna build stuff anyway. What if we try to build a net zero tiny home and the students can learn like how to do the electrical with that? How are we gonna find power for this tiny home? So they did that. Other schools in like remote, a remote island on bc in bc they worked with their local indigenous community where they saw that they had already had in their on, um, their reserve a really big greenhouse one that worked really well for their location because it's so windy on the island there. so they worked with the indigenous and they were able to duplicate something that already was proven to work in another area and said, Hey, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can just try to get this greenhouse here. And now they're growing food for their breakfast program at school and everything. and it's all student led. It's all students doing the projects, doing the builds, teachers helping out. so they're really, really cool projects and it's nice to see how students can do these projects that make a really big difference in their schools.

John: 5:28

You say student led, is that a necessary component for someone to get funding with you?

Jess: 5:33

so when we open up our applications, we say you need to apply and you need to have a student lead minimum, and you need to have a teacher lead. And the both of them have to kind of submit the application together. We try to talk to everybody that applies as well, um, to try to say like, Hey, The applications can be really spooky, but you don't have to be afraid. can, we can walk you through it. What's your idea? Let me make sure that however you fill in this application, it's the best idea you're putting forward kind of a thing. So we walk everybody through the whole thing. We get some students where they're the ones that just submit the application to us on their own. Um, and then they just say, well, I put my teacher's name down on it. Others, where it's a little bit more the teacher kind of taking the lead. But we always make sure that you've definitely got both of those components because we wanna make sure that students are a part of that. Kind of like project management process too. Just figuring out, okay, we gotta call a contractor. How are we gonna do this? So yeah, making sure that students are a part of the mix.

John: 6:23

If, uh, someone is listening today's student or a teacher and they're thinking, oh, I could do this cool project at my school, uh, what's the first step that they wanna take to connect with you?

Jess: 6:34

definitely check out the website. We don't have our next application date open yet, or we don't know when it's gonna be'cause we still gotta get some, we gotta fundraise a little bit more for it. But when we do, we always post things on our website. You can subscribe to like our email newsletter on our website. We don't send much except for hey. There's grants now, it's a good kind of reminder. First and foremost, remind yourself that these kind of things can be really intimidating. When you hear somebody got a big solar panel at their school or a big greenhouse or whatever it may be, you could very easily think, how am I gonna be able to do that at my school? That seems like a lot of work, but I can't stress enough that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. A lot of other people have been doing this, and we can help you. If there's this rural school in Saskatchewan that did this project, we kind of know how they did it and how they went about it. And we can help you find out the way to do that in Northern Ontario or wherever you might be.

John: 7:23

You mentioned the government of Canada coming to you. I'm gonna put you on the spot and ask you a question that you can't actually answer, but take your best guess at it. How do you think this happened that the government of Canada became so interested in net zero that they wanted to pursue this? is that a grassroots thing and people pressuring MPs or was it a big leadership thing with our government, how, how do you think that happened?

Jess: 7:46

So you have departments in Canada that are responsible for climate change and the environment. That's their job. They're called E Triple C Environment, Climate Change Canada. they manage a lot of different things related to climate and environment all across the country. But what they actually had over the last couple years was something kind of separate from the government and it was called the Net zero Advisory Body, and it was essentially this kind of third party of scientists, experts, climate experts, industry, and they said, Hey, we know there's all these other countries. Everybody's trying to get to net zero. Everybody's trying to reduce their emissions. We need to be doing this in Canada. We need to make sure that our government is accountable and that we're actually working towards that in our policies and the ways that we're running each province, all of that. So the net zero advisory body and the government department, they kind of worked together and they said, okay, well, because Net zero we, we really wanna be delivering on engaging Canadians with this and making sure that we're moving towards this. We're gonna open up a grants program. And because we know that it's really important to empower youth in these spaces because youth are doing some of the most impressive work in Canada, honestly, on climate. They were like, we're gonna open up a small grant. Specifically to engage net zero climate in Canada and youth and see what they could do with it. So that's how it kind of started. And then, because they were like, well, who's youth and who's doing stuff in this, in this circle? They knew FE S's name because we're pretty well known in that space now. Um, so they said, Hey, we're gonna talk to them.

John: 9:13

I've been told that when we write or email our MP, that represents hundreds of voices, so it's very important to do that. Uh, do you have a message if we, if we wanna write in and say, Hey, let's do more of this. Uh, is it the ECC that we hit or your organization or what, what's important to say to our leaders?

Jess: 9:35

I think what I always encourage people is get local. Who's, who's the principal at your school? First questions I would even be asking is, do we have a climate action plan for our school? Does our school have a plan for how they're gonna fix these old windows or what they're gonna do here? does our school district or our school board have a climate action plan? Do they mention the word sustainability once in, in like a strategic document that is public? And I would just start. Asking questions. Honestly, I think a lot of the times for young people, you feel like, I can't call my MP or my MLA. I have no idea what I talk to'em about. I know I care about climate, but what am I supposed to advocate for? What am I supposed to say? But I think even if you put yourself out there, introduce yourself and just lead with curiosity, right? It's okay to say, I don't know everything. I'm not the expert on all of this, but I know that I care about my future and I wanna know what our school's doing about it. I'm a person in this region. I'm a person from this city. You're my MP. I don't know everything about climate. I don't know everything about policy, but I wanted to introduce myself to you and let you know that I care. And I'm really worried about this. What are you doing to protect my future and protect the environment that we live in? And I think that is a really attainable place to start. And then very quickly you'll start to realize, oh wait. I'm in here now. I kind of know what this space is. I can start asking more questions or I, I actually know what I wanna advocate for. I wanna bring up this to them. And yeah, it all just kind of starts with putting yourself out there first. That really awkward one. the hardest part.

John: 11:03

Great advice. Now, Jess we talked before the interview and it became clear that you are on your way eventually to leave FES because it's a youth led organization and you want to honor that. And so as, as you grow older, you're. You know, paving the way for your, your departure, not because you dislike it, but because that's part of the deal. But, uh, when you look back at where N:OW for net-zero came from and where maybe it might go in the future, what makes you happiest about what it's achieved and what do you imagine it doing in the next few years?

Jess: 11:36

that's a really great question. So I've been at FES for almost five years now. I started kind of right after the pandemic, and it's been so cool to be learning so much on the go. I think a lot of youth organizations are like that. We're just trying to push forward and figure it all out as we're moving. so looking back now, We've been able to support these schools. I'm, I'm really proud of what we've been able to do. But I'm so just fascinated by each of the schools that we've worked with. We worked at 31 schools by now. The projects that they've come up with have been really, really cool. Honestly, and I think it's a really good reminder what kind of, what I'm excited about to look to see where these projects go and where N:OW for net-zero goes is we've worked with these rural, remote, and indigenous communities and we've got something started there. Even though it might just be a small greenhouse that's only making enough food for their school breakfast program, It started something and it's built a little bit of momentum in that community, right? Because schools are communities, there's teachers, there's students, there's parents, there's businesses related to a school, right? And you've, they've, these projects have built this momentum to say, Hey, we're doing something about this because we care about it, right? And maybe they only got$15,000 from us, or$10,000 from us, and you can't really do too, too much with$15,000. But I'm really excited to see where we can take that momentum and go from there. We have one school that we worked with where the students said, we're learning about energy and efficiency, and we see we have these really old lights in our school building. Right. And we gave them the money and they were able to do lighting retrofits for eight of their classrooms. Do they have more than eight classrooms in that school? Yes. Did they get to do all the classrooms? No, but what they did was they did it once the students planned it, the students called the contractors. They got these lights in, and then the students went to their principal, and to their school board and said, Hey, we learned about how much money our school could save in money and in emissions if we switch this lighting and even though the students were only able to change eight, the hope is that if they keep barking up the tree, maybe the school will find the money to replace all the lights. And I think it's sort of that pushing the snowball, um, and seeing how big we can roll it to, to see what some of that bigger kind of community wide impact could be a couple years from now, once this momentum has started.

John: 13:50

Right. Getting the ball rolling and empowering youth. Wonderful stuff. Now we shouldn't leave FES without talking about the other branch, which is Youth Harbor. And uh, do you wanna tell us a little bit about that?

Jess: 14:03

like we said, FES is the main kind of charitable organization. It's youth led youth serving, so everyone at the organization's under 30, so we have FES and then it kind of has their two main programs. It has NPH net zero, and then it has the Youth Harbor. And the Youth Harbor is sort of like our big kind of flagship program at FES. This is what a lot of people actually know us for. But this is where we provide like really key capacity building support for young Climate organizers in Canada. So these are people, it could be high schoolers, it could be students in college, university, it could be people that have just graduated college, university that are still in that youth gap, um, that are doing any kind of climate work for their communities. We provide funding to them. Sometimes it's project-based funding. So if they're saying, well, we wanna be doing this farming initiative in our community, we will give them funding. Um, others, it's funding for access, right? We know youth, a lot of the time, they don't get the invites to the fancy conferences where people are talking about our futures. So what we try to do is we try to say, Hey, if you know of an event happening in your city or, or something happening where you could go and you could learn about climate from other folks, let us know because maybe we could pay for your ticket there. Maybe we can pay for your flight there. Do you need a hotel? Maybe we can give you money for that too. So we try to provide funding on that front. Um, we've got some like wellness funding programs as well because we know youth are usually doing this and they're usually not getting paid for it, right? Everybody else can have their big fancy jobs in this climate sector and their salaries and everything, but. Youth are doing a lot of this work unpaid. And not a lot of people recognize that. We have co-working spaces that people can go to, just. try to make the Youth Harbor kind of like a massive kind of space, a network where youth can come at any point in their journey of climate engagement and say, this is a safe space. I need help. Or I'm starting out, I'm learning, or I've already been doing a little bit. I need help to get to that next level. And we have multiple programs to try to fit everybody's needs in that way.

John: 15:58

as I poked around your website a little bit, I noted that storytelling plays an important role. Why is that?

Jess: 16:04

Storytelling is just huge for, I think communications as just humans, right? We could sit here right now and you could tell me all about the GHG emissions with vegetarian diets. You could tell me all about how the world's burning, all this stuff, right? But. I'm only gonna take so much of it, right? If you tell me a story about something that happened in your community, Hey, you know what? We actually had these crazy heat waves last summer and it really sucked. How about you? Are you feeling that? I think if we could all relate to each other, maybe in more of these stories of what climate change actually is and what it's looking like in our communities. I think it would be so much easier.'cause right now we're getting lost in the sauce. As Canadians, we're getting, we're getting lost in the politics, we're getting lost in the misinformation it's, it's overwhelming, but I think if we could really just look to our neighbours and say, how you doing? What are your concerns for the future? Oh, you're worried that. You're not gonna have enough money in the future. I get that too. Right? That's, that's a fair concern to have. I'm worried a little bit about climate, that's what I'm really worried about. But I bet you there's a lot of connections on that front too. Right? So I think if we could bring it back down to just telling stories as fellow Canadians and our neighbors and making it local we'll probably start to see a lot more results.

John: 17:18

how has the rubber hit the road with storytelling in terms of N:OW for net-zero?

Jess: 17:21

Probably a bunch of our grantees, a bunch of our projects, they're like, oh, I got another email from Jessica. But I email them often. I try, we try to chat with them often because we try to collect, we get them to take photos of their projects, we get them to send them to us. We, we meet with them so that they can tell us, okay, well these were some of the challenges we faced this month as we were trying to get, um, this vertical farm up and running or whatever it may be. Um, so we, we kind of document all of this stuff and then that's why on the website we have these, the solution stories library where we kind of put all this content up there to tell their story, right? Because we really do think that if more schools just knew about attainable action projects. could probably replicate that in their communities. So one, we try to tell stories for that replication to try to say, Hey, somebody did this over here. You could probably do it there. But then also what we do is we try to connect them with local media in their area. We try to, we call up CTV news, we call up their local radio station. We message their newspaper and say, Hey, there's this school in your, in your region that's doing some really cool stuff. It would be awesome if you could go talk to them. It would be awesome if you could highlight that. Because yeah, I think it's important too to tell this story and show that like youth are figuring it out. Youth are taking a stab at it. They're leading with curiosity. They're trying to get this conversation going in community. If they can do it, one, we should give them credit for it. And two, the community should start having that conversation out too. It's not just some shiny, like, oh, look at the cute young people doing this. It's, no, let's actually talk about what they're doing.'cause it's really important.

John: 18:49

Right. Well, we'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes so that our viewers and listeners can go check some of those stories out. I have to go off on a bit of a tangent, Jess, and ask you when I looked again at the website at N:OW for net-zero and FES. It looks like you have a great mix of people on your steering committee, but it seems like the core work, according to"who we are", appears to be in the hands of maybe five young women. Now. Women seem to be doing a lot of this work these days-maybe that's just the way it's been in history. I mean, there's lots of men and young men doing things too, I grant you that. But when I hear about stories and people send me stories, you should interview this person, so many times it's women. Do you have a thought about that?

Jess: 19:33

It's definitely a trend, right? Like we're seeing for sure. Like, I don't, I don't know the stats, but I feel like I, if I had to bet, majority of people in the climate action space are probably female identifying. So what is it, what that tells us what that means. Who knows? It's all speculative. I don't know how we could try to figure it out, but I think, I think more so it's, it's why is that the case, right? Like, that shouldn't be the case. Everybody should care about this. It shouldn't just be rich people, poor people, and like everybody should be caring about this stuff. And maybe it means what are the pathways? What are the pathways into working for climate, right? A lot of people think, oh, if I go work for a nonprofit or if I go into the climate space. I'm just signing up for a low salary. I could just go do something in the corporate space and make way more money. Right. Maybe it's something to do with that and something with that misconception, because I think it's important for a lot of Canadians to know that like there are a ton of jobs. In this energy transition that we're trying to move towards. There's a ton of jobs, a ton of high paying jobs and we're looking for this. Another big policy that I would say to check out for folks is the Youth Climate Corps in Canada. This is a youth movement where they're pushing government to try to say, we need to create more job opportunities in the climate space for young people. I think that's what's exciting about these projects too, is it's not, we're not just working with like the green club at the school, right. Sometimes it's the green club. Sometimes it's a science, A grade 11 science class. A lot of the times it's the tech class, like the shop class, the mechanic kids. They're kids that like, God, I don't even really like going to school. Definitely didn't really care about climate, but they're like, oh wait, I could learn how to build this tiny home and I could save myself and my family money if we were to switch over to some of these things. That's cool. I'll do that. Or they're like, Hey, you need help building this, like retrofitted renewable energy shed in the back for a hydroponic system. I like building, that's how I like to learn. Sure. I'll be in there. So I think it's making people realize that like climate isn't just for like the hippies there's, there's something for everybody to do in this space no matter what your interest is. Science, engineering, building business money, like anything truly. So it's, it's finding a way to take what you're already interested in. And then apply that to climate and environment.

John: 21:44

Very true and I must point out that our last two guests on the podcast were young men in South Florida doing very cool things with. Anyways. before we run out of time, Jess, we need to ask you what your climate action is that you've chosen today.

Jess: 21:57

my most simple advice or the thing that I do is talk. I try to talk about it. I think, again, like if my parents are watching the news and somebody's yapping at them about climate, they're like, okay, that was the news. Do I trust CTV today? I don't know if I trust CTV today. If I talk to my parents and say, I learned about this thing today. What do you guys think about that? I actually am really worried about this. I think I'm really concerned about this. A lot of the times my parents are like, oh, wow. Like they trust me. They don't think I'm spewing nonsense at them. So we have a conversation about it, right? And then. They might talk to their friends about it or they might start to see things differently. And even if it's your parents, your family, your friends, your, the place that you work at, the school that you go to, right? Talking about it. I think can be one of the most impactful things that we all can do, because right now we're seeing a lot of it. We're seeing the news, we're seeing the tv, we're seeing social media, but we don't actually talk about it in our social circles. Sometimes we forget about our spheres of influence. Even if you're a student watching this and you're in school, like you don't have to have the answers. I wanna remind you that, but even if you were to just go to your teacher and say, Hey. Can we talk about climate change this year at some point? Maybe could we tweak one of the assignments to be related to climate change? I think like I'd really like to explore that a little bit, right? That's, that's a big snowball in and of itself. So talking, I know it sounds crazy. Too simple, honestly, but talking and gabbing.

John: 23:22

Well, in almost 50 episodes, you're the first one who's mentioned talking, so I love it. It's a great suggestion. Now, uh, you talked about social media, about watching the news. Uh, you could talk about our recent federal election and the fact that the green parties don't even have enough seats to be an official party. That can kind of drag us down a little bit. What gives you hope?

Jess: 23:43

What gives me hope? Hmm. Well, I know there's things that bring me a lot of joy. I try to, I think it's important that everybody tries to make sure that you feel joy. You carve out space for joy in your lives these days. Um, but what gives me hope in the climate movement Communities are starting to realize that climate solutions are also just really simply affordability solutions, right? Everybody keeps trying to convince us that the fight for climate is opposed to the fight to make houses cheaper, to make groceries cheaper, all of that. And I mean, they, they're making us think it's two separate things, right? Where really a lot of the times like. Renewable energy, local food systems, greenhouses like this is stuff that makes food more accessible for communities energy, more accessible for communities and cheaper for communities. So I think what I get excited about is that I think before we used to be like, care about climate, everybody please. People were like, okay, we'll get there. But now we're like, Hey. How are your grocery, what's your grocery bill? You want that lower, here's this solution. That's one good for the planet, but also it's just gonna make it cheaper for your family. And I think people are starting to have more of those conversations or start to realize those solutions in their communities because they're, we're starting to see them in more communities. And that makes me hopeful because I think a lot of the time we care more about the money piece than the climate piece. We weren't able to necessarily convince people, we've been trying to convince people to care about climate for a long time and we're, we're here. So I think it's exciting to see, oh wow, we're this other piece is coming in here that might actually really move the needle

John: 25:19

And since and since you brought it up, what brings you joy? Just for fun.

Jess: 25:23

Oh my gosh. What brings me joy? I try to get outside. I try to touch grass, try to see sun. I. think, yeah, being outside and dis trying to disconnect is really nice. And making sure that I'm connected to other people, right? Like connecting with other people, expressing when I'm really sad about something and letting them kind of hold that with me, I think is really helpful too. So getting outside. Crafting, music, community stuff, um, events, whatever it may be. I just say, get out.'cause when you're stuck in the sadness corner on the phone or on the computer, it's a dark place. Everybody, you gotta get outta there.

John: 25:59

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jess,

Jess: 26:02

Yeah, thank you so much. It's been so much fun.

John: 26:05

and thank you dear listener. If you enjoyed what you've heard here today, I'll bet you have. Please share the podcast with someone you love. We will be back again next week, same time, same place to hear from another climate action figure. Until then,

Jess: 26:19

Go Figures!