
In August of 2018, a 15-year-old girl left her classroom and sat alone outside the Swedish parliament every day for three weeks before the Swedish elections in order to protest climate inaction. After the election, she continued her school strikes every Friday. She started out alone, but was soon joined by other students, and eventually her movement grew internationally. This girl is Greta Thunberg, the legendary climate activist who spoke at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, expressing youth disappointment on climate inaction, and the founder of the international organization Fridays for Future. Though she is now a globally revered activist, she started out as just a student concerned about the climate crisis.
So how does a high school student become a climate activist?
Aya Boutassamout, a freshman at Brooklyn Latin High School, was motivated to take up climate activism because of the impacts of air pollution on her personal life. Boutassmout grew up in the upper west side of Manhattan and suffers from asthma caused by the air pollution. The asthma made it so that she had to sit out during gym and recess, and which has made it difficult to make friends. Boutassmout says that her asthma caused her to be very lonely as a child.
Her struggles with asthma motivated her to take action. “I remember when I started doing research and I found out that my asthma was caused by air pollution, I was angry and, honestly, really disappointed,” says Boutassamout. “I decided to get into climate activism because I felt it was better than just hoping for the best.”
Boutassamout joined Fridays For Future (FFF) NYC this year. “I felt that joining an organization specifically for youth that has the same goal as me (climate justice), would aid my feeling of helplessness and sadness,” she said.
Her first action with FFF NYC was testifying in front of the New York Power Authority in favor of expanding their ambitions from construction 3.5GW to 15GW of renewables and shutting down high pollution “peaker plants.” “The testimony was my first day taking action with FFF and I really enjoyed the experience,” says Boutassamout.
Boutassamout plans to continue her work with FFF going forward—“I don’t want the cycle to repeat.”
While Boutassamout is an up and coming activist, there are also many students who have years of experience advocating for climate justice.
Helen Mancini is a senior at Stuyvesant High School and an activist and leader of FFF NYC. She learned about climate change in middle school and first attended a climate strike in 2019 when Greta Thunberg came to NYC. After quarantine ended, she immediately joined FFF NYC as a response to the climate anxiety she was experiencing.
Since then, Mancini has dedicated herself to her activism and the development of FFF NYC. When she joined, FFF NYC was small, having been significantly reduced since the COVID-19 pandemic, but Mancini and other members of the group worked to rebuild their student ambassador network and re-established their school strikes.
In the following years, FFF NYC developed a more strategic approach to demands and policies, expanding the group beyond its original purpose.
“It’s getting really involved locally with so many different avenues of change,” Mancini says. She, along with FFF NYC advocates on the city level by testifying on issues such as composting and Local Law 97, which addresses reducing emissions from buildings. She also advocates on the state level in Albany through lobbying and creating a relationship with the assembly members.
The first time Mancini was involved with national strategy was the 2023 March to End Fossil Fuels, which brought 75,000 people together in NYC to demand President Joe Biden to stop approving oil and gas approvals. The march did lead to some wins, Mancini claims, such as a pause on liquefying natural gases in Louisiana and the passage of the American Climate Corps (a policy supported by the sunrise movement to train youth for green jobs). Although Mancini is involved in advocacy at all levels, she plans to focus more locally going forward. “I think I personally—especially right now, after Trump—prioritize local organizing. I think it’s more sustainable.”
Mancini attributes the success of her activism to seeking out opportunities. “With Fridays For Future, we are a part of a bunch of coalitions and networks, but we had to ask to become a part of them,” she explains. Mancini organized FFF NYC to attend the Public Power hearing that both her and Boutassamout recently testified at. She had to email organizations, ask how to testify, and then simply show up. “People aren’t going to put the opportunities in front of you, that’s not how many systems are made. It’s you actively seeking it out that’s going to make a difference, and it can be really, really rewarding.”
Divyansh Agrawal is another trailblazer in youth climate activism. He is a junior at Dublin High School in California. He is the founder and CEO of the Junior Philanthropists Foundation, a youth-led organization for climate advocacy.
Agrawal got his start when he lobbied in Sacramento with a youth-led education policy organization. Through this experience, Agrawal learned about the workings of advocacy and witnessed firsthand the power of youth activism. This motivated him to start his own youth advocacy organization. He founded JPF in California, and expanded across the country. He is now expanding the JPF further in order to become involved in national policy.
“Fast forward a couple of years, the JPF has mobilized over 5,000 student activists and members in over 25 states to support and pass 17 critical environmental bills—and we’re just getting started,” says Agrawal.
Agrawal’s work is motivated by his hope for the future. “My vision is to create a world that’s environmentally conscious—where every person has the environment in mind and works in accordance with it, instead of against it for economic or political reasons,” he says.
Shayne Cytrynbaum is another inspiring activist who is a senior at Golda Och Academy in New Jersey. He has taken a unique angle with his climate activism, exploring it through Judaism. He is the policy director on the leadership board of the Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM).
Cytrynbaum started his climate activism in seventh grade within his own local community but joined JYCM in order to be a part of something larger. “What first attracted me to the Jewish Youth Climate Movement was actually its size—unlike some of the larger groups like the Sunrise Movement that seemed simply too big for me to make much of a difference personally, JYCM was small enough that my contributions would be relevant and I would be valued on a personal level,” says Cytrynbaum.
Cytrynbaum values the community that JYCM and climate activism has brought him. “As I got deeper and deeper into JYCM, and especially after my first leadership retreat, however, I fell in love with the community and people and self-narrative and culture, and I am so glad to see that despite our strong momentum and rapid growth, JYCM continues to value into each and every individual member and anyone can shape it,” he says.
All four of these climate activists are exploring different channels of activism, getting involved in different organizations, are motivated by their own past and future, and finding their own ways to make an impact. But they are all high school students, and being a young person participating in advocacy comes with difficulties
“When you’re like the youngest in a room, or on a Zoom call, or in a hearing, in the lobby meeting, it can feel really intimidating,” says Mancini. However, because youth advocacy is unexpected, it is more impactful. “People want you in the room so much more, and your voice is just 10 times more powerful because it’s so rare that young people find the way to get involved. Not because they don’t want to, but because a lot of these structures of decision-making are not meant for young people to get involved in. So once you do, you’re shocking people and you’re already breaking barriers,” she says.
If you are inspired by these incredible activists, don’t be afraid to step into the climate movement, or begin advocating for another issue you care about. “My advice is that literally anybody can get involved and make a difference, especially locally,” says Mancini. “Don’t feel insecure about being the youngest; I think it is a strength as something that makes you unique, and your voice current. Elected officials love future voters, so they really want to hear from you.”
“My advice to any youth in this space is to just dive in,” says Agrawal. “There are so many amazing groups to join and people to work with, but don’t spend too much time figuring out the ‘best fit’ for you. Instead, just choose a group that seems good for you, and get started—or, maybe even create your own if that’s what you want to do. Either way, you’ll learn the most by just jumping into the climate space.”
“People need to understand climate isn’t a separate or faraway issue,” says Boutassamout. “It’s something that affects us everyday, will continue to affect us, and in the future, will impact our lives even more than it does now. I decided to get into climate activism because I felt it was better than hoping for the best.”
Youth advocacy is a powerful vessel for creating change. And in a time where climate action is of the utmost importance, creating change is necessary. So if you are a young person who wants to make a difference, join an organization, testify for legislation, or start a project in your community, find your own way to make your voice heard and become a student climate activist!