We get it: With all the gloom and doom related to climate change and air quality, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and anxious. But rest assured, there are little things that we can all do in our everyday lives to help “be the change” we want to see in our environment.
Our Fresh Voices for Clean Air participants helped craft some specific actions you can take TODAY to help take action on air quality issues locally.
Unfamiliar with our Fresh Voices for Clean Air Program? It’s an innovative initiative that paired a small group of high school students from Allegheny County with a group of their peers in Birmingham, Ala., for a 10-month collaborative partnership.
Throughout the past year, the cohorts in each city regularly gathered via virtual meetings to participate in discussions with each other and guest speakers both to learn more about air quality and to build skills that will help them become more effective environmental advocates.
By the end of the program year, participants created, developed, and executed an air quality-related project of their own choosing, with the support of adult mentors in both Pittsburgh and Birmingham. This is one of them.
The partnership between air quality-focused non-profit organizations in Pittsburgh and Birmingham reflects our cities’ similar industrial and environmental history. A century ago, Birmingham was nicknamed the “Pittsburgh of the South.” Both cities have experienced some of the worst air quality in the nation. Discovering and discussing the similarities and differences between experiences in these two regions will be a key component of the collaboration.
You can learn more about our Fresh Voices program here.
And you can learn about those actions here:
