{"id":11820,"date":"2019-08-02T18:15:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T18:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=11820"},"modified":"2019-08-02T18:15:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T18:15:16","slug":"claiming-our-future-sv-institutes-youth-council-holds-first-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/02\/claiming-our-future-sv-institutes-youth-council-holds-first-forum\/","title":{"rendered":"Claiming Our Future: SV Institute\u2019s Youth Council Holds First Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hayden Seder<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Several Youth Forum attendees waiting for the SVI forum programming to kick off. Photo credit: Sun Valley Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Sun Valley Institute\u2019s Youth Council held its inaugural \u201cClaiming Our Future: Youth Action for a Resilient World\u201d Youth Forum July 23-25 at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum, paralleling the Sun Valley Institute\u2019s fifth annual Sun Valley Forum, a conference of roughly 200-250 national and international leaders from investment, policy, business, nonprofits, sports, entertainment and academia to share strategies, broaden thinking and ignite new partnerships with a goal of building greater resilience.<\/p>\n

Fourteen high school students ranging from incoming freshmen to outgoing seniors attended the Youth Forum after completing a simple application.<\/p>\n

The Youth Forum focused on the same themes as the Sun Valley Forum: sustainability, security and the economy. Experts in each field spoke and workshops were held to discuss challenges locally and globally in food, transportation and plastic waste.<\/p>\n

The Youth Council was formed in January of 2019 after 17-year-old Ruby Horton attended the Sun Valley Forum with her father and noticed few young people in the audience. Horton asked Aim\u00e9e Christensen, founder and executive director of the Sun Valley Institute (SVI), about the possibility of running a concurrent event for high school students. SVI reached out to local schools Wood River High School, Sun Valley Community School and The Sage School for representatives to participate in the co-creation of the event. Those who attended the inaugural Youth Forum came from Sun Valley, New York, California and Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change is a generational justice issue,\u201d said Lexie Praggastis, Youth Forum coordinator of the Sun Valley Institute.\u00a0\u201cThe younger generations will be more impacted by climate change than any other generation previously. To be a catalyst for building a more resilient future, the mission of SVI, youth must be represented and engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

For its first year, the Youth Forum focused on the World Economic Forum\u2019s 2019 Global Risks report, \u201cOut of Control,\u201d which named the top two risks facing the globe as extreme weather events and the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation.<\/p>\n

The three-day intensive forum began with Wednesday\u2019s opening keynote session, \u201cTransforming Leadership: Youth Claiming the Future.\u201d Speaking were Eamonn Store, founder and CEO of FairShare; Vic Barrett, Co-Plaintiff, Juliana v. The United States of America & Action Fellow, Alliance for Climate Education; Jonah Gottlieb, executive youth director, National Children\u2019s Campaign & executive director, Our Future Now; Ruby Horton, founder, Sun Valley Institute Youth Council; Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana, Lead Plaintiff, Juliana v. The United States of America & Co-Plaintiff in Chernaik v. Brown; Jamie Margolin, co-founder and co-executive director, Zero Hour & Co-Plaintiff in Aji P. v. State of Washington.<\/p>\n

A full day of workshops at the Youth Forum was centered on design thinking where students moved from problems to prototypes to pitches, and ended the day giving those pitches. Students designed solutions to the challenges of empowering Aviation High School\u2019s community, in Seattle, with participating in alternative transportation to school, improving access to local food at The Sage School, and shifting practices at Sun Valley Community School to eliminate single-use plastic at school events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Youth Forum came to the Sun Valley Forum to find inspiration and to feel empowered,\u201d Praggastis said. \u201cI watched as the Youth Forum took the main stage and shared their ideas and voices, leaving many in the audience, including myself, in tears. At the end of the day, it was the youth that provided the Sun Valley Forum with inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Youth Forum participants attended most of the Sun Valley Forum keynote addresses over the three days and also had time for optional morning hikes, ice-breaker activities, a film screening and a tour of The Hunger Coalition\u2019s Bloom Farm. The Youth Forum wrapped up with a last day spent rafting the Salmon River and lunch at Alturas Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were honored to host the Youth Forum, to provide the platform for them to learn, connect and take action, and now they will have a network of allies forever,\u201d said Christensen, founder and curator of the Sun Valley Forum and founder and executive director of the\u00a0Sun Valley Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hayden Seder The Sun Valley Institute\u2019s Youth Council held its inaugural \u201cClaiming Our Future: Youth Action for a Resilient World\u201d Youth Forum July 23-25 at the Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum, paralleling the Sun Valley Institute\u2019s fifth annual Sun Valley Forum, a conference of roughly 200-250 national and international leaders from investment, policy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community","8":"category-news","9":"category-slider"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}